Fine line black tattoo of two small stick figures holding hands on the side of a ribcage, with a berry-print top and bottoms in the frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tiny stick figures holding hands on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small black line tattoo of two stick figures holding hands sits on the side of the torso over the ribs. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the figures are simple and set apart from the surrounding skin. The pale skin contrasts with a red and blue berry-print top and bottoms, with a black and white background behind.

Fine line Ribs Stick figure Holding hands Figure Line art

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The second mate says we will raise the Horn in nine days if the wind holds, and it has not held once since Montevideo. I am writing this on the back of a spare manifest because the paper in my bunk has gone soft with damp. Mr Okafor, who keeps the galley, lets me sit by his stove after the middle watch, and the stove is the only warm thing aboard.

You asked in your last letter whether I still draw. I do, though the pencil stub is down to an inch. Yesterday I drew you and Dad in the margin of the log, two little figures holding hands at the rail, the way you used to make me hold yours crossing Stanhope Road. Mr Okafor laughed and said they looked like clothes pegs with ideas. He asked who they were. I told him they were the two people I was going home to, and he went quiet and gave me a second biscuit.

The swell took the cook's kettle off the hob last night and nobody was hurt, which the captain counted as luck. At dawn the sky went the colour of a bruised plum and then clean as a washed plate, and a whale stood off the larboard bow, long as a tram and blowing like a stationmaster. Everyone ran to the rail. I stayed where I was and thought about how small we must look from down there in the water.

When I get off at Liverpool I will come to the house before my bag, before anything else. Keep the kettle on. I will bring you a shell from the Horn if I can find one that isn't cracked, and I will hold your hand the whole length of the road, even if you tell me I am too old for it.

Your brother, Tom