Fine line outline tattoo of the state of Texas in dark ink on the back of a woman's ankle, with jeans in the background.

Texas outline on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small, single-line outline of the state of Texas sits on the back of an ankle, with the foot resting on denim. The linework is thin, even and dark, with no shading or fill. The tattoo is shown in soft natural light against a muted background, and it is the only point of focus in the composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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The outline came out right in the end, though it cost me two nibs and a week of Mr Abernathy's temper. He wanted the state drawn for the county office in one unbroken line, no lifting the pen. I told him a line that never lifts is a line that never lies about where it has been. He did not laugh, but he signed the sheet.

The hard parts were the ones you'd expect. The Panhandle wants to be a rectangle and won't admit it. The Gulf coast is all bays and little hooks where the shrimp boats tie up at Port Aransas, and my hand kept wanting to smooth them out like a schoolgirl's hem. The Rio Grande is the worst. It will not sit still for a surveyor. Every spring it takes a yard of bank and gives back a different yard somewhere else, and I have to decide, on paper, which yard belongs to whom.

Last night I took the sheet home and held it to the lamp. From the back the line shows through as a faint blue ghost, the state reversed, like something seen through water. I thought of you on the porch in Galveston, telling me to come home before the paper curls. I haven't decided yet.

I've sketched a copy small on the corner of this envelope, no bigger than a stamp. Put your thumb over it. Tell me which side of the line I'm standing on.

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