Realistic tattoo of a star torn open through skin on the upper arm and shoulder, filled with words including FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, FREEDOM and a red LOVE.

Torn-skin star with words on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large star sits on the upper arm and shoulder, drawn to look as if the skin has torn open to reveal lettering beneath. Words such as FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, FREEDOM, TOLERANCE and INTEGRITY are shaded in grey, with the word LOVE picked out in red, and several words are cut off at the star's edges. The shading and raised, cracked skin edges give the piece a strong three-dimensional effect against the arm, with a tattoo partly visible at the top left.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Shoulder Star Torn skin Word Love Freedom Family

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The plaster came away from the north wall of the lambing shed in grey sheets, curling at the edges like scorched paper, and by the second week of January I could see the star underneath. Dad had never mentioned it. I found it with a bolster chisel and a flask of cold tea, working down from the hayrack while the ewes shouldered each other at the gate.

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It was painted in black and grey, a big five-pointed thing with its corners lifted, and across it ran a column of words in capitals that the damp had gone at. FRIENDSHIP. FAMILY. FREEDOM. TOLERANCE. INTEGRITY. I could make out LIBERTY on the lower arm and a scrap of something ending in -ANCE where the render had flaked away. Only one word had kept its colour. LOVE sat in the middle in red, bright as a cut, the way Nan's lipstick used to look against her Sunday coat.

Nan said Grandad Tom painted it the summer before the flood, when the village was still arguing about the new school roof. She never said why. She only said the star had been a promise, and promises were like lime wash: you had to keep putting them on or the weather got in. Then the weather got in anyway, and she stopped talking about it. I thought of her standing in the yard with her arms folded while I scraped, and I wished she could see the words coming back, half of them gone and the rest holding on.

By dusk I had cleared a yard of wall, and the frost came down over the open plaster like a lid. I left the rest where it lay. The red was the last thing to lose its shine in the torchlight, and when I switched the torch off I could still see LOVE, faint as breath on glass, above the gate where the lambs were settling.