Colour tattoo of a red flag with a blue cross and white stars, shown through torn skin on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Torn skin revealing a flag on the upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a tattoo on the outer upper arm, showing a flag with a blue diagonal cross edged in white and filled with white stars on a red field. The flag appears through ragged, torn skin edges that are outlined in black and shaded in a light brown tone. The tattoo is coloured in red, white and blue, set against pale skin and a maroon shirt sleeve.

Upper arm Flag Star Cross Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sack split at the corner while I was hauling it onto the proving rack, a long ragged tear that let the flour out in a soft white rush. Underneath the brown kraft paper was a printed lining I had never noticed in six years of Tuesday deliveries, all faded stars and bold diagonal bars gone pale at the edges. Gary from the mill had always said the lining was just for damp.

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It was ten to four and the oven was still cold. I swept the spill into a tin with my palm and kept the torn paper folded back, because the light from the lamp fell across it in a way that made the stars look like they had been pressed through from somewhere else. Mrs Okafor from the cleaning firm next door came round the back for her bread before the buses, the way she always did, and she stood in the doorway with her keys in her fist and asked whether I was going to fix that or leave it for the rats.

I said I would fix it. I did not. I mixed the dough the way my mother had taught me, slow and cool, and let it rest while the sky went from black to the colour of weak tea. When the first loaves came out the crust was splitting in long pale seams, and the whole room smelled of something warm and nearly sweet.

I carried the torn sacks out to the yard and stacked them for the recycling, lining side down, so that nobody passing the gate would see what they had been hiding.