Photograph of a realistic tattoo of a star torn open through skin on a man's upper arm and shoulder, revealing words such as freedom and love in black, grey and red ink.

Torn skin star with words on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large star sits on the upper arm and shoulder, with its edges shown as peeled and torn skin that reveals words inside, including freedom, family, tolerance, integrity and a red LOVE. The effect uses fine shading, highlights and skin texture to create a three-dimensional look, and the words are rendered in crisp black lettering. Ink is mostly black and grey with red for the word love and natural skin tones showing around the design.

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

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at Gull's Rest had ever touched the back bedroom wall, so when the plasterer's chisel slipped on a damp Tuesday in March, it was Mrs Hollis who came up the stairs with her apron still on.

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Beneath the crumbling lime was a star, cut from grey board and peeled at its points like a sleeve pulled back from a tide-worn arm. Across its face, in black ink gone soft at the edges, were words written in a hand that leaned towards the sea: freedom, family, tolerance, integrity, liberty, friendship, happiness. Near the middle, in a red that had not faded, was one word alone: LOVE.

Her grandmother had told her the house kept what people left behind. A sailor's wife had written the first words the winter her husband's boat failed to come home. Each lodger since had added one, her grandmother said, and a few had added the hard ones too, reality among them, so the wall would never lie to anyone who lived there. Mrs Hollis had never believed a word of it, and she had never once looked behind the paper.

She wet a rag at the basin and wiped the dust from the red letters until they shone. Then she sent the plasterer home, left the star uncovered, and carried the tea up herself. That evening, for the first time in forty years, she left the back bedroom door open to the sea wind, and the words caught the last of the light coming off the water.