Black and grey blackwork tribal band tattoo running down the side of a hip, beside a navel and above lace underwear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal band tattoo on a hip

Blackwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a torso, with a woman lifting the hem of a white vest top to show a vertical band of tribal-style ornament on her side. The pattern combines solid black shapes with spirals, swirls and curved lines, and it narrows toward the top of the lace underwear. The greyscale image is evenly lit, with the tattoo framed in the centre of the composition.

Blackwork Geometric Other Tribal pattern Spiral Swirl Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The new lodger in number four arrived on the Tuesday tide with one suitcase and a sea chest so heavy the carrier swore at it all the way up the steps. He is a rope man from Hull, quiet, with a laugh like coal being tipped down a chute. I gave him the room with the sticking sash because nobody else would take it, and it seemed a shame to waste a view of the harbour on pigeons.

Today I went up to change his bed and found a sheet of tracing paper pinned inside his wardrobe door. Someone had drawn a long band on it in pencil, solid black shapes alternating with spirals that curled inward like the carvings the boys scratch on the sea wall at low tide. The band narrowed as it ran down the page, the way a rope tapers when it is almost spliced through. I stood there longer than I should have with the sheets over my arm.

At breakfast I asked him, as politely as I could, what it was meant to be. He buttered his toast and said it was a tattoo, drawn out by an old man on the quay at Valparaiso when his ship came in, years back. The old man had told him the pattern would keep the sea from taking him, and he laughed when he said it, but he has not once gone down to the water without touching the rail. I asked if it had hurt. He said the spirals had been the easy part.

I have pinned the drawing over the dresser, beside the tide tables. In the evenings, when the lamp is lit, the spirals catch the light and seem to turn slowly, as if the paper were waiting for a wave.

Yours in haste, Edie