Small black fine line geometric tattoo of a triangle enclosing a circle with a vertical line, placed on a person's ribs, in a black and white photograph.

Triangle and circle symbol on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a black outlined triangle with a circle inside it, crossed by a vertical line, sits on the side of the ribs. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is black and white and shows the torso in close profile, with a loose knitted cardigan held across the upper body and denim jeans at the waist.

Fine line Geometric Ribs Triangle Circle Vertical line

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your brother has been turning the pebble over since the slipway, the grey stone with the hole worn clean through its middle, and he keeps holding it up to the light as if the sea might show through it. Gulls are fighting over a crab shell on the bollard where Mrs Pell used to tie her skiff. Nobody on Carrick Quay has said her name since the February storm, and nobody says what she left in the bottom of that boat, which is why you are both standing here at low water with a torch that will not stay lit.

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Three things she left. The pebble, which your brother found first. A length of oar-ash, planed smooth, that no one can lift without a grunt. And a brass ring the size of a wedding band, cold enough to stick to your thumb. Your grandmother said the three of them were a bargain made with the tide, and whoever gathered all of them could walk out on the water and never be called back by it. Your grandmother also said the Pell woman had been mad for thirty years, so you hold the ring at arm's length and wait for him to be sensible.

He isn't. He drops the pebble into his coat pocket, takes the oar, and wades past the weed-line before you can shout. The water rises to his knees, then his waist, and the oar stays level across his shoulders like a yoke. You watch the lighthouse beam swing across his back. He does not sink. He just keeps walking, smaller and smaller, until the grey sea and the grey sky meet in one straight line and there is nothing to tell them apart.

You slide the ring onto your finger. It is warm now. Out past the breakwater a single bell rings twice, and you realise it is the sound your brother made when he laughed, carried back across the water like a message you were always going to have to answer.