Small black silhouette tattoo of three pine trees on the side of a woman's upper arm, in a botanical style.

Three pine trees on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of three conifer trees sits on the side of the upper arm, with tiers of branches drawn as solid black silhouettes. The ink is a single dark tone, with no shading or colour. The arm fills the right side of the frame, and a white sleeveless top and long blonde hair appear at the left.

Botanical Upper arm Pine tree Tree Conifer

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third pine went over in the March gale, and when the wind dropped I climbed the headland to find its roots lifted like a hand held up in surrender. My grandfather planted the first of them the year he took the light at Scarrow Head, a sapling wrapped in wet sacking and carried up the cliff path under his coat. He said a light needs something dark beside it, or the sea forgets where the land stops.

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The second tree went in the year my mother left, when my father dug all one afternoon and would not say why. The third was mine, the summer I turned twelve. I planted it badly, too close to the others, so their branches have knotted together ever since. Dad said that was the right way round. A family shelters better when it can't tell where one tree ends.

Now the oil store smells of paraffin and there is nobody to fill it but me. The relief boat comes on Thursdays with tins of beans and a clipboard that wants signatures. I told the man from the board that the trees are a navigation mark, which is nearly true. From the bay you can line the crown of the middle pine against the lamp, and any skipper who knows the rock will keep east of it.

I have cut the fallen trunk into lengths and stacked it against the wall. The stumps I have left alone. On Thursday I will light the lamp at dusk as always, and when the boat comes round the point I will watch whether they count two trees standing or three, and whether it matters to them that one of us is gone.