Colour tattoo of an American flag showing through torn, shaded skin, in realism style, on a person's upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Torn skin American flag on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a flag with red stripes and a blue field with white star shapes, revealed through skin that appears ripped open and peeled back. The skin edges are rendered in beige and tan tones with dark black shadows, giving a strong three-dimensional effect. Bold red, blue and tan colour dominates the design, which wraps around the upper arm and shoulder against a plain light background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder American flag Flag Star Stripe Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walt,

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The snow has shut the Hollis Pass since Tuesday, so the six of us are stuck here at the Lantern Inn with nothing to do but eat Mrs Calder's stew and listen to the boiler knock. I have been up in the attic sorting the linen trunks, and under a pile of moth-eaten bunting I found the old flag we hung over the bar the summer you left. It has been folded wrong for years. The blue field has gone the colour of a bruise, and two of the stripes are hanging by threads.

I sat on the floorboards with it across my knees for an hour. Somewhere in the second hour I decided I was not going to throw it on the fire. I have a needle and a spool of red thread from the sewing box, and I am going to mend it properly, stitch by stitch, the way Mother taught us when the rain came through the roof.

Where the cloth has torn, the edges have frayed back like skin pulled from a graze, dark at the seams and pale at the lip. It made me think that a wound always shows what it is made of, and that the stripes underneath were brighter than I remembered. The stars were painted so thin on the muslin that the lamplight came straight through them.

Mrs Calder says the road will open Thursday. I will hang the mended flag from the porch rail before the coach comes up, and if you are on it, you will see it from the bend. Come home through the pass, Walt. The stripes are finished.

Yours, Ruth