Colour realism tattoo of the Texas state outline filled with the Texas flag, showing through torn skin on the upper arm near the elbow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Texas flag through torn skin on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows the outline of the state of Texas filled with the Texas flag, with a white star on blue and red and white bands. Surrounding it, the skin is rendered as torn and peeling, with shaded grey and brown edges that give a three-dimensional effect. The image is a close crop of a bent arm against a dark blue shirt, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Realism Upper arm Texas State outline Star Torn skin Flag

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marisol, we are four days out of Port Arthur and the Gulf has not let go of us once. The new mainsail went up this morning, stiff as a board and smelling of the loft, and I stood on the hatch cover with my hands in my pockets like a man with nothing to prove. Captain Ruiz says I should have waited for the sea to settle before I took the old sail down, but it had split along the third seam and was slapping about like a gull with a broken wing, and I could not stand the noise any longer.

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When I folded it, there was a patch under the reef points I had never seen, sewn over a hole so old the thread had gone the colour of weak tea. I cut the stitches with my knife. Beneath the cloth, someone had painted the whole state of Texas in red ochre and tallow, its outline swelling out in one piece, and inside it the blue field, the white star and the red and white bands, dark where the damp had got in. Grandfather Teodoro painted that in the yard at Freeport the year before he lost an eye to a snapped block. He never told anyone why he hid it under canvas. I think he wanted one piece of home the sea could not wear through.

The captain wanted it over the side. I did not argue. I rolled it tight, wrapped it in oilcloth and tied it to the stanchion beside my bunk, where it knocks against the bulkhead every time we roll. Tomorrow we turn for the Sabine, and if the wind holds I will be home by Sunday. Tell Lupe the hall curtains need a new hem, and that I have a flag for them, though it is not one anybody will salute.

Your father, Ignacio