Colourful Japanese style octopus tattoo with grey waves and green tentacles across the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus and waves on an upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large octopus with orange, red and yellow skin and a visible eye fills the centre of the piece, with its tentacles curling across the lower area. Grey and white wave crests with black shading frame the octopus on the left and top, with green tentacles and suckers at the upper right. The shading is soft and blended, and the colour ink dominates the composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The octopus came back to the rock pool below the potting shed again last night, and I have decided to stop pretending I don't mind. Father would have had a word about it. He always said a pool that size belonged to the lettuces, but the lettuces have given up on the salt spray and the thing in the water has not. Its skin is the colour of the marigolds along the wall, orange going to rust at the edges, and when the light comes off the bay it flushes yellow and then red, as if it were pleased with its own cleverness.

I have been feeding it the crab shells Mr Penrose leaves on the step. I know that is foolish. Yesterday one arm lifted out of the water and curled around the tin bucket, very deliberate, the way you would test a door handle in a house you were not sure was empty. The suckers along it looked like the pale green buttons from your old coat.

The waves have been bad all week, the white crests standing up off the breakwater like fingers that will not close. On Thursday one came over the wall and filled the herb bed, and when it drew back the octopus was sitting among the thyme, watching me with that gold eye as though I were the one who had strayed in.

I have written to the council about the wall. I have not written about the octopus, because I suspect you would come down on the next train and take it home in a jar. Keep your jars. Come in August instead, when the marigolds are out, and I will show you where it lives.

Love, Margaret

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