Fine line black tattoo of a state outline with a cursive word running down its right edge, on the side of an ankle.

State outline with script on ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of a US state sits on the side of an ankle, with a cursive word written vertically along its eastern edge. The linework is thin and even, in a single dark ink with no shading. The skin is pale and the tattoo is centred on a soft purple towel background.

Fine line Lettering Ankle State outline Map Script

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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

Hold that basket steady, the windfalls bruise if you let them knock against the crate. My mother's uncle Eli had a pen that never once left the paper. Every map he drew in the packing shed that August he started at the Tennessee line and ran the nib round the whole state in one go, river bends and all, and he'd not lift it for a sip of tea or a bite of cornbread.

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The county men laughed. Said a state couldn't be drawn like fence wire. So Eli wagered them a crate of Elbertas that he could do it with his eyes shut, and he did. Then he carried the pen down to the eastern edge and wrote a word along the side, slow, looping every letter so the ink never broke, and it was the word he'd been too shy to say out loud to the girl who ran the ferry.

Come September the men returned with their crate still full, because nobody could find where he'd started or where he'd stopped. The girl read the map on the porch step, traced the coast with one finger, and found her word waiting at the place where the river meets the gulf. She folded the paper into her coat and walked the whole long road to the ferry landing, and that's the only map in the county without an ending, which is why, if you look close at these peaches, you'll notice they never ripen all at once.