Black and grey fine line tattoo of a bow on the chest, below a pendant necklace and an open lace top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small bow tattoo on the chest

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a person's upper chest, cropped below the chin, wearing an open lace top and a pendant necklace. A small bow with looped ribbon ends is tattooed centrally on the chest, drawn in thin dark linework with light grey shading. The composition is tight and centred on the tattoo, with a hand holding the lace at the lower right.

Fine line Chest Bow Ribbon Necklace Pendant Lace

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The spool of black silk had been empty since Tuesday, so when Mrs Alder sent me down the quay with the petty cash, I was told to bring back grey and not to dawdle past the fishmonger. I dawdled. Everyone dawdled on Skerrow Quay in March, when the gulls fought over the bins and the boats came in low and heavy with the week's catch.

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Mr Pryce at the wholesaler's had no grey. He had a roll of black silk gone soft at the edges, and a tin of loose bobbins that smelt of tobacco and paraffin. He cut me a length without being asked and tied the end into a little looped bow before he handed it over, the way he'd done for every girl who ever came in with a shilling and a grudge. "Your Mrs Alder will want the tails even," he said. "She always does."

Back at the shop she turned the ribbon over under the lamp and said nothing for so long I thought I'd bought the wrong thing after all. Then she took a parcel from under the counter, a brown paper square tied for a fisherman's widow in Runswick, and she unpicked her own knot and retied it with the silk. She made the loops small and tight, and she let the tails run longer than they needed to, down past the string.

"Why so long?" I asked.

"So the one who opens it has something to hold onto before they get to the bit inside," she said, and she pressed the wax seal down with her thumb.

I've tied a thousand bows since then, and I still leave the tails long. Nobody has ever asked me why. They just pull, gently, and the whole thing comes undone in their hands.