Small black seahorse tattoo on the back of a person's neck, partly framed by dark hair pulled up, against a green background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Seahorse tattoo on the nape of neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black seahorse silhouette sits on the nape of the neck, with the head turned away from the camera. The hair is gathered up and a hand with pink-painted nails and a ring rests in it. The background is a soft green and the image has a warm, slightly faded tone.

Neck Seahorse

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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

The tank at the Pier Aquarium had been drained twice that spring, and both times Mr Hollis swore the seahorses would not survive the bucket. Only one did. He was called Walter, because Mr Hollis said anything that stubborn needed a dull name. I was eleven and had the job of topping up the brine each morning with a jam jar, which I did slowly.

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Walter was the only one with a swollen belly. The female had gone to the far tank after a courtship of colour changes and dancing, and left him the eggs. The men on the harbour wall said the father carried them in that family, and thought it the funniest thing they'd heard since the war. Walter grew thinner every week, and my father said nothing about it, which was how I knew he was worried.

On the last Thursday in August the pouch had gone slack. I found Walter upright against the glass, still, and behind him a drift of tiny curled shapes clinging to the weed. I did not cry and I did not fetch Mr Hollis. I took them up one by one on the wet tip of my finger and carried the jar down the slipway at low tide.

I tipped the jar over the harbour wall and the sea took them without fuss. I counted them to keep my hands steady. Thirty-one, thirty-two. The last one caught on my thumb and hung there, curled tight as a question mark, before it let go and drifted out after the others. Walter was buried under the rockery with a tin lid for a headstone. I never told anyone what I had done. I suppose he knew.