Black and grey wing tattoo across the ribs and a blackwork ornament on the forearm of a woman in a black bikini standing in the sea.

Wing tattoo on ribs and blackwork forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cropped photograph of a woman in a black bikini standing in shallow sea water, with the face outside the frame. A black wing tattoo spans the lower ribs and abdomen, and an ornamental blackwork design covers the left forearm and wrist, with a small solid shape on the upper chest and fine lettering along the side of the thigh. The ink is black and grey against warm skin, with a soft, low-sun light and the sea filling the background.

Blackwork Forearm Ribs Thigh Wing Ornament Mandala Script Heart Bikini Beach

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas wanted the wing carved in oak, but the harbour master wanted it painted gold, and Ruth wanted it left alone, because a wing that has already been broken should not be made to look new. They argued it out on the slipway while the tide climbed the posts. Ruth had found the wing in the wrack after the March gale, a long primary feather of driftwood the colour of stewed tea, split down the spine like a ribcage. She carried it up the shingle under one arm and would not put it down.

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Her grandmother had kept a ledger of every boat that left Skerry Quay and every boat that did not return. Ruth took it from the drawer that morning and found, on the last page, a pencilled line in the old woman's hand: the sea keeps what it can carry, and returns the rest by the wing. Nobody had ever known what it meant. Tomas said it was a recipe for bread.

They fixed the wing to the bow of the Margaret that week, not gilded, only sealed with linseed oil so the grain showed through. Tomas cut a small compass rose into the wood above it, the points hatched in fine black lines the way the old charts were drawn, and Ruth copied the pencilled sentence onto a strip of tin and nailed it beneath the rail.

The first spring tide after, the boat came back through the gap in the reef with her nets heavy and her hull low, and the wing took the evening sun and held it like a coin. Ruth stood on the quay and read the tin plate aloud, every word of it, though the only ones listening were the gulls.