Bare back of a woman with a vertical line of planets, including one ringed like Saturn, running down her spine and a world map tattoo on her shoulder blade, with red and blue continents.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Solar system down the spine and world map on shoulder

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A vertical column of planets runs down the centre of the back, with a ringed planet near the middle and smaller spheres above and below. A world map outline sits on the upper right shoulder blade, with a few continents filled in red and blue and the rest in fine black linework. The photograph shows the back in warm, soft sunlight, with the arm raised and the head cropped out of frame.

Fine line Back Shoulder Planet Solar system Saturn World map Map Continent Spine Globe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The night train from Carlisle was late again, so I sat on the bench under the clock at Preston and counted the lamps in the car park, the way you used to count the stairs to our flat. Forty-one. I wanted you to know I didn't cry, though I did think about the cardboard box of your father's maps still sitting in my hallway, the ones he wouldn't let us throw out. You said they were useless once the coastlines changed. He said they were a promise.

I took the blue one with the torn corner out of the box before I left. I've pinned it above the sink in my new room, next to the photograph of the orrery from the museum in Lancaster, the one with Saturn on its brass arm. The landlady asked why I had so many planets on my wall. I told her I was trying to work out how far away everything is from everything else, and she laughed and said that's what the whole town does on a Friday night.

The porter has just called the last connection to Glasgow, so I'll post this in the box by the ticket hall. I won't post the other half, the bit where I say I'm sorry I didn't wait for you at the junction. You'll know it anyway. Keep the big map. Hang it wherever the light comes in strongest, the way Dad used to.

Yours, always, Marjorie