Seated person with a black ink traditional-style heart banner reading MOTHER and a draped figure on the inner forearm, with TAKE CARE lettering on the back of the hand.

Mother banner and take care lettering on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A close view of a seated person with arms resting on their lap, showing several tattoos. On the forearm, a heart-shaped banner reading MOTHER sits beside a draped female figure, with a small coloured rose partly visible at the top edge. Thin black lines circle the wrist, an ornamental design covers the back of the hand, and the handwritten words TAKE CARE sit across the knuckles; the predominant ink is black and grey.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Hand Mother Banner Heart Figure Rose Snake Lettering Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lorry has no fuel left for the Lincoln run, so the Mardi Brothers Travelling Circus sits in a stubble field outside Spalding, and you spend the grey morning counting the bulbs on the big top that no longer light. Your mother's snake tent is the last thing still painted. She had the banner redone in March, a heart with a ribbon across it and MOTHER in letters as thick as a thumb, and she paid for it with the last of the rope money. Nobody asked what she meant by it. You suspect she meant nothing except that she was sick of being called Madame by men who owed her.

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The python is called Sergeant and is older than you are. You feed him on Thursdays from a bucket of thawed rabbit, and he watches you with the patience of someone who has already seen the show close. Tomas, the strongman, is driving his van to Nottingham on Friday to sell the generator, and he offers you the passenger seat if you can get Sergeant into a pillowcase without being bitten. You manage it. The snake goes slack and heavy in your arms, like a wet rope pulled up from a well.

At the services outside Peterborough you sit with the pillowcase on your knees and the engine ticking as it cools. Tomas buys two teas and a packet of custard creams and says nothing about the field, or the banner, or the woman who used to walk the wire above it all. You take a biro from the glovebox and write on the back of your hand, in the careful capitals she used on your school bags, TAKE CARE. The ink smudges when you flex your fingers, so you press harder, until the words are firm enough to be read by someone who is not there.