Ribbon banners reading Darling, You'll Be Okay

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of a tattoo design shows a woman's head in profile with long hair, wrapped by three ribbon banners. The banners read DARLING, YOU'LL BE and OKAY in block capitals, with swirled scroll shapes at the top and bottom. The shading is light and graphic, drawn with graphite on a plain grey notebook page.

Lettering Woman Profile Hair Ribbon Banner Swirl Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry to Skerrin Holm took fifty minutes in calm weather, and it was never calm in November. My mother stood at the rail of the Kittiwake with her hair tied back in a green ribbon she had bought from the shop on the quay, and each time the bow dropped into a trough she laid her hand flat between my shoulder blades and said the same thing, as if it were the boat's name.

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I was nine and was sick over the side twice. Dad was out on the lobster boats that week, so it was only the two of us and a deckhand called Tam, who kept handing me ginger biscuits wrapped in a paper napkin. Mum never once looked green. She had grown up on the holm and said the sea only wanted to see whether you minded it, and the trick was to keep your eyes on something that didn't move. So she pointed out the lighthouse, the gannets folding themselves into the swell, the mainland losing its edges in the spray.

The last crossing I made with her was in a flat calm, the sea like a dinner plate, and she was the one who went quiet. She was sitting by the window of the cottage above the harbour, the ribbon gone the colour of weak tea. When she started to cry about the boat, I told her the thing she'd told me, and she laughed at me the way she used to laugh at waves.

I found the ribbon in the drawer of her kitchen table after the funeral. It was still knotted at one end, and I keep it wrapped round my wrist now whenever I take the ferry out, which is often, because I am still learning to keep my eyes on something that doesn't move.