Close-up of a small black fine line tattoo of a palm tree and birds on an ankle, above a blue lace-up shoe.

Palm tree tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a woman's ankle and foot in a pointed blue lace-up shoe with a metallic heel. A small, thin black linework tattoo of a palm tree with a few birds sits on the outside of the ankle. The background shows striped trousers and a pale marble floor, and the image is sharp and evenly lit.

Fine line Ankle Palm tree Bird Island Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Auntie Mags said the palm was a weed. She said it with her back to me, stacking pots by the cistern on Gull Rock, the way she said most things she did not want to argue about. The thing had come up through the cracked render in March, two fingers of green no taller than my hand, and by June it had three fronds and a grudge against the wind.

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I watered it from a jam jar every evening after the boat went out. Nobody else on the island bothered with a garden that did not feed you, but I liked the way the leaves split themselves like paper cut by a careful child. Above it the terns came and went in ragged argument, and sometimes a pair of swifts sat on the wire and watched me as though I were the odd one out.

In August the storm took the roof off the net shed and most of Auntie's runner beans. I found the palm bent flat against the wall, its roots still gripping the lime mortar. I cried, which embarrassed me, and then I went to fetch the rope.

By the first week of September it stood upright again, tied to a stake with a strip of Dad's old sail. Three swifts came down onto the top frond that morning, folded their wings, and stayed a long time. Auntie came out with her bucket, looked at the birds, looked at me, and for once said nothing at all.