Two matching grey shaded heart tattoos with small blue and pink flowers, one on an ankle and one on a calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching heart tattoos with flowers on two ankles

Ankle · Mixed · Photo

Two matching tattoos show a stylised heart motif with grey shading, an outlined swirl and small five-petalled flowers. The left tattoo sits on an ankle in blue and purple-grey tones, and the right one sits on a calf with pink and purple flowers. The skin is lightly lit against a neutral background, and both designs are shown at a similar scale.

Ankle Calf Heart Flower Swirl Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last train of the Harrowgate Brothers' Circus pulled into Doncaster one carriage short of where it had started, and nobody mentioned the empty space where the elephant used to ride. My sister Bea and I had the flying act that season, two swings strung between poles in a tent that smelled of wet canvas and diesel. We had a trick we'd invented at twelve, when we were too small for the big top and practised in a paddock behind the horse lorries. We held the same silk ribbon from opposite ends, swung out together, and let it curl into a heart in the air before we let go.

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Mr Sallis, who owned the circus and most of the bank's patience, told us in August that the tent would go to a car auction in Wakefield by October. He said it kindly, the way he said everything, and then he went back to counting the ticket money with a pencil behind his ear. The posters on the lorry sides had faded over the years. The blue flowers painted in the corners had gone the colour of dishwater, and the pink ones looked like they'd been left out in the rain, which they had.

On the last night there were eleven people in the stands. Bea climbed first, and I heard the ribbon hiss over the rigging before I saw it. We swung out, joined our hands in the middle, and for one second the silk folded into the shape we'd drawn in chalk on the boards every morning for a decade. Nobody clapped. Then Bea laughed, and I laughed, and we let go anyway.

We kept the tent. Bea bought it from Mr Sallis for the price of his diesel, and for one summer we ran it ourselves in a field outside Otley, two swings, one ribbon and a handful of people who came because the poster promised the hearts would be real.