Black dotwork ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail forming a braided-looking ring, on the upper back of a woman with dark hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ouroboros serpent on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A serpent biting its own tail forms a circle at the centre of the upper back, with its head resting at the top of the ring. The body is drawn as a twisted, rope-like band, shaded with stippled dots that create depth and texture. The tattoo is in black ink only, set against smooth skin, with the subject's hair above and white shoulder straps and bows framing the lower sides of the composition.

Dotwork Back Serpent Snake Circle Tail Rope

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The ropewalk has gone quiet since the Harrow boys left for the herring boats, so I have time to write properly for once. You will laugh at me, but I spent yesterday on the big coil we were laying for the Margate tender, twisting three strands clockwise with the hook until my palms split. Old Tobias says a rope is only as honest as its lay, and that you can tell a cheat by how the strands fight each other. This one does not fight. It goes round and round and comes back to where it started, which is what he wanted for the mooring on the cliff.

You remember the lighthouse keeper's wife, Mrs Quayle, who came in last month wanting a line for her washing and talked the whole time about her husband's snake-bitten dog? She had a book of old drawings with her, one of those serpents eating its own tail, and she asked if we could work the same shape into a hawser. I said no, we do not make decoration, and she laughed and said it was never meant to be decoration. It was meant to keep going.

I went down to the slip after closing and tried it myself, feeding the last fathom back through the eye of the first. It took me three attempts, and when I finally had it closed the wind dropped as if someone had shut a door. The loop sat flat on the wet stones, and I could see the join was hard to find. I left it there for the tide. In the morning it had gone, and so had Mrs Quayle's book, which I suppose she came back for.

Write when you can. Tell me if the Margate men pay on time this year.

Your loving sister, Bet