Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Palm tree silhouette

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black silhouette of a palm tree with a curved trunk leaning to the lower left and spiky fronds spreading out at the top. The fronds have thin white highlight lines cut into the black shapes, and the trunk tapers toward the base. The image is a single-colour graphic on a plain white background, with the tree centred and filling most of the frame.

Palm tree Silhouette Trunk

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been watching the same leaning tree for an hour before the mate will admit it is real. From the bowsprit it looks like a pen stroke someone forgot to lift, the trunk bending out over the water as if it wants a drink. Ellis, who has sailed these waters twice, says the lean comes from the trade winds and not from any lonely god. You believe him about the wind and not at all about the god.

Keep reading

The landing party goes ashore in the grey before dawn with two casks and a surveyor's chain. The sand is fine as flour, and the fronds knock together overhead with a dry sound, like old cards being shuffled. You find the place where the leaves have cut the sky into pieces, thin white slivers where the light gets through, and you stand beneath them longer than the job requires. Ellis calls your name twice. The chain has gone slack in your hand.

On the way back to the boat you notice a mark low on the trunk, an initial cut years ago and nearly healed over, the bark swallowing its edges. Someone came before you and left a message the island has been slowly erasing. You take the surveyor's knife from your belt and cut a small clean T beside it. When the ship returns in a year, it will be half gone, and that will be fine.

By evening the island is only a black cut-out on the horizon, the tree still leaning as if it has learned to tolerate the tide. The white lines in the fronds are the last thing you can make out before the sun drops. Then the coast becomes a grey thread, and you can no longer tell which dark shapes are palms and which are only your eyes trying to make sense of the water.