Small black palm tree tattoo on the side of a person's ribs, beneath the arm, with a green swimsuit and woven hat in view.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small palm tree on the side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black palm tree silhouette sits on the side of the torso, below the arm. The image is a sunlit photograph taken beside a railing over clear blue-green water. The wearer's face is hidden by a large woven hat, and the tattoo is the only ink in the frame.

Ribs Palm tree Sea

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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 launch comes alongside the breakwater at ten past six, and by the time you have the ledger open the first passengers are already squinting at the sun coming off the water. You stamp what you are handed. Most of them arrive with the crumpled look of people who have been awake since the last port. The rubber stamp on your desk is shaped like a coconut palm because the clerk before you ordered it from a catalogue in the nineties, and nobody ever bothered to replace it.

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Obi, the ferryman, leans across the counter with a bundle of passports in one hand and a paper bag of limes in the other. He says the woman at the back of the queue has been on the boat since dawn and has asked for nothing except a seat by the rail. You check her documents. The photograph is a little younger than the person holding it, but the name matches, and the visa is in order. She has no declaration to make. She only holds out her hand, palm down, and asks whether the stamp would sit on skin.

You tell her the ink is meant for paper. She says she has heard that before, and smiles at the tree on her wrist as though it were an old friend who had come to meet her. You press the stamp into the pad, then onto the margin of the ledger, and the palm comes up sharp and small and black. It is the only colour in the room that does not belong to the sea.

At seven the launch pulls away. You keep the ledger open to that page for the rest of the shift, because it is the first entry you have ever made that did not need a second look.