Black and grey blackwork Polynesian tribal tattoo covering the shoulder, upper arm and upper chest of a bare torso.

Polynesian tribal shoulder and arm sleeve

Blackwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large tribal tattoo covers the shoulder, upper arm and upper chest, with a sun-like radiating motif on the chest and bands of chevrons, triangles and interlocking geometric panels down the arm. The linework is bold and the solid black fills create strong contrast against the pale skin. The black and white photograph is taken against a dark background, with the cropped frame showing the torso and arm without the face.

Blackwork Shoulder Upper arm Chest Tribal pattern Chevron Triangle Geometric pattern Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Day nineteen out of Rarotonga, and the swell has finally given us a pattern I can trust. Long rollers from the south-east, then a short chop that breaks them into chevrons where they meet the reef water off the lee side. Tane says he feels it in his heels before he sees it. I have been writing it in the margin of the chart, where the printer left room for soundings, because there is no other paper aboard with space to spare.

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The sun rose wrong on the fourth morning. It came up a finger's width north of where the star-stones said it should, and my grandmother would have spat over the side and blamed a quarrel between cousins. I did not spit. I took the sextant, then the knotted cord, and checked both twice. The cord agreed with the sextant, which is worse than either being wrong alone, because it means the sea has moved us and not my hands.

We turned south-west on the swell's strongest line and kept it there through two nights of squall. Tane stopped asking questions and started counting the rollers under his breath, three long then one short, the way the old fishermen taught him on the slipway at home. On the seventh morning the chop went flat and a grey smudge stood up out of the water at the edge of the sky, low and dark, exactly where the chevrons had been pointing.

Tonight I drew the sun into the log the way my grandmother taught me, a circle with rays cut short into triangles, so that whoever reads this after us knows where we stood. Tane asked why I wasted ink on it. I told him the ink was for the ones who come after, and the rays were for the sea, which likes to be looked at before it lets you pass.