Small starburst on the side of the ribs
Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo
A small starburst made of many thin radiating lines and dotted tips sits in the centre of the frame on bare skin. The linework is delicate and uses dotted ends, with the ink appearing dark blue-grey. The tattoo is surrounded by plenty of plain skin, with a soft diagonal shadow from a raised arm on the left.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Mags,
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The sign at the Lantern Motel went dark again on Tuesday, so I've spent three nights up a ladder on the Barstow road with a box of spare bulbs and a cold pot of tea. You'd laugh. The starburst on the front, the one Dad's old partner sketched on a beer mat in 1961, has thirty-two rays and a dot at the end of each one, and every dot is a bulb. Eleven were out. Nobody else on this stretch would have noticed, but the lorry drivers rely on it. They say it's how they know the turn for the fuel stop.
Mr Okafor, who keeps the petrol pumps, brings me a flask at midnight and tells me how his wife first saw that sign from a bus window, coming in from Needles with one suitcase and no plan. I don't think he means to tell me anything. He just talks while I work, the way you hum when you're mending something.
Last night I got the final dot lit, the one at the far east point, and stepped down to look from the road. The whole thing burned blue-white against a sky so black it looked wet. For a minute I forgot the wiring and the grit in my cuffs. Then a truck came round the bend, slowed, and flashed its headlights twice, like a hello.
I've enclosed a postcard of it. Keep it somewhere dry. I'll be home by the first of the month, if the wind leaves the ladder standing.
Love, Dell
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