Black and grey tattoo of three elephants walking in a line, decreasing in size from left to right, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three elephants walking in a row on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Three elephants in profile walk in a line from left to right, each smaller than the one beside it. The shading is soft grey with darker outlines, giving the bodies and ears some volume. The tattoo sits on the side of the torso against bare skin, with a grey top pulled to the edge of the frame.

Ribs Elephant Trunk

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Carrow Brothers' Travelling Menagerie came into Hadley Cross on the Tuesday, and by Wednesday the whole of Mill Street had come out to watch the elephants walk to the field. You are nine, and Mr Pardoe has given you the job of walking at the back, where the smallest one goes. Her name is Bess. She is only three, and her ears still look too big for her, folded and grey like wet newspaper.

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The eldest, who leads, has the widest ears you have ever seen, and the middle one keeps her trunk curled tight over the tail of the animal in front. Bess keeps hers out and swinging, reaching for the sweet paper that blows across the road. Mrs Ashdown from the bakery is shouting that they will trample her begonias, but nobody listens. You walk with one hand near Bess's side, not touching, because Mr Pardoe says touching is how you get kicked.

At the gate of the field the wind turns, and the whole street smells of hot tar and oats. Bess stops. She looks back at you, not at the crowd, and lifts her trunk so close to your face that you feel her breath. Then she goes on through the gate after the others, each one a little larger than the last, as if the line had been measured with string.

The circus leaves on the Friday. You still have the chalk mark you made on the feed shed wall, just above your knee, and on the first Friday of every month you walk down to it and stand beside it to see how much you have grown.