Woman lying on a towel at the beach, seen from behind, with a small black palm tree tattoo on her upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Palm tree tattoo on upper arm at the beach

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, wet, reddish hair lies on a patterned towel on a sandy beach, photographed from behind with her face turned away. A small solid black palm tree silhouette with a slim trunk and fronds sits on her upper arm, shown in clean black ink. The image has warm sunlight, a hazy sky and sea in the background, with the tattoo as the focal point in the lower right.

Botanical Upper arm Palm tree Beach Sea Sand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ammon, the boat came round the headland this morning with the black palm still on her bow, though the pitch has cracked along the trunk and the fronds look like fishbones. Tell Captain Sosias the carpenter at Berenice wants his pay before the timber is cut, not after. I stood on the quay with the tally sticks under my arm and counted nine jars of wine before anyone spoke to me.

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You asked why I keep the palm painted when it only marks the dues. The clerks here cannot read our letters, but they can read a tree. Every man on the dock knows that the date groves of the south sit under palms like that one, and dates pay less than wine at the customs table. The officer squinted at the mark, nodded, and waved the crates through. He did not open them, which was lucky, since the crates held nothing but sand and two cracked pots.

Last night I climbed the mole and looked south. The sea lay flat as a bronze plate and the sky above it was the colour of a dove's breast. I thought of the boy who painted that palm for us, his hands so black with pitch that he wiped them on his own hair. He told me a palm is the only tree that stands straight in every wind. I did not believe him then, but the trunk on that bow has not bent once in three voyages.

Come home before the winter rains and bring the boy's name, which I have already forgotten. There is sand in the folds of this sheet. Shake it over the lamp and think of me.

Teos