Realistic red and black lace ribbon bow tattoo wrapped around the inner wrist of a light-skinned arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red lace ribbon bow on wrist

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A red satin ribbon bow with black lace panels is tattooed around the inner wrist, with a small raised knot at the centre of the bow. The tails hang down toward the back of the hand, and the ribbon edges are shaded with dark tones to suggest depth and folds. The arm is photographed against a plain, blurred grey background.

Realism Forearm Bow Ribbon Lace Knot

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the ribbons at ten past three, in the bottom drawer of the treatment room on Ward Seven, behind a box of spare gloves gone brittle at the corners. Someone has wound them into a tight red coil and secured it with a rubber band gone sticky with age. Satin on one side, black lace on the other, the kind a girl would tie in her hair before school photographs. Nobody has signed for them. Nobody has signed for anything in this drawer since the ward was rearranged in the spring.

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The night sister, Marjorie Oduya, is due a cup of tea and a handover at four, and you are meant to be restocking the saline. Instead you unwind a length and hold it under the lamp. The lace has a diamond mesh that catches the light like a net, and the satin still carries a faint gloss. You tie a bow with one hand, the way your mother once did on your Sunday dresses, and it holds its shape better than you expected. Pinned to the trolley it looks absurd, a bit of frivolity among the clipboards and the bleach.

At half past four a buzzer goes off in bay three, an old man asking for water and then, when you bring it, asking whether it is morning yet. You tell him not yet. On the way back you pass the ribbon on the desk and wonder who had wanted to keep it: a nurse who moved on, perhaps, or a mother who never came back for the bag she left, or a child who was promised she could choose one thing from the box if she was brave.

When the first grey light comes over the car park you return the ribbon to the drawer, bow side up, so whoever finds it next sees it before the gloves. On the bus home you catch yourself still tying it in your head, one loop over the other, as if the knot might hold something.