Shaded teal ribbon tattoo with a small black semicolon near its lower end, placed on the forearm.

Teal ribbon and semicolon on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a teal ribbon tattoo on skin, shown in a loop shape with the lower tail crossing over the upper section. The ribbon is shaded in blues and greens with soft highlights that give it a three-dimensional look, and a small black semicolon sits near the lower end. The plain, pale background and tight framing keep the focus on the tattoo.

Realism Forearm Ribbon Semicolon Awareness ribbon

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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

In the kingdom of Lessary, where the river Oddle ran brown after every spring, a weaver named Hanne Parrow kept a loom in the room above the ferry house. The lake reeds gave a teal dye that no one else in the valley could make, and she sold it by the yard to the bell-ringers and the midwives, who liked a colour that looked like shallow water.

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When her brother Ansel came home from the salt mines and stopped speaking at supper, she did not ask him what was wrong. She wove instead. Each evening she made another length of ribbon, folding the tail over the top the way her grandmother had taught her so the loop would hold its shape. Ansel sat on the step outside and watched the shuttle go back and forth through the open window.

On the thirtieth night the old scrivener from the market hall climbed the stairs with a bottle of plum brandy and a question. 'What do you call the mark that says a sentence is not finished?' She knew the answer. 'A semicolon,' she said. 'It is a pause that refuses to be the end.' He took a pen from his coat and drew two small dots at the lower corner of her cloth, one above the other, with a tail beneath them.

Ansel came in from the step and lifted the ribbon off the frame. He turned it over twice, tied it round his wrist, and asked if there was any bread. Hanne cut the thread and said nothing, which was the answer she had been waiting for.