Black and grey fine line and dotwork tattoo of an atom-like design with dotted orbits, small planets and a sun-like centre, on the outer upper arm.

Atom and planets on an upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a central sphere with a radial sunburst pattern, surrounded by several elliptical orbits drawn in dotted and solid lines, with small shaded planets, one of which has a ring. The linework is fine and precise, and the orbits and planets are built up with stippled dots and light shading. The design is in black ink on pale skin and sits centred on the upper arm, with a dark patterned sleeve at the top of the frame.

Dotwork Fine line Upper arm Orbit Planet Sun Solar system Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sun in our orrery was a brass dish with forty-two bent rays, and Mother hammered every one of them flat the winter the big top came down for the last time. Nobody came to the Pemberton and Vye Travelling Show to see a tiger any more. The few who came stood in the dark of a canvas tent and watched the planets turn on their wires, Saturn tilting its ring like a man lifting his hat.

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The orrery had been Grandad's idea and Father's ruin. Its orbits were drawn with a stippling pen, a dot every few inches, so the tracks looked like pinholes in black card when the lamp went low. Mercury had lost a leg and the Moon kept sticking to Earth. I oiled the gears on Thursdays and kept the books on Fridays, and on the Saturday before the sale I counted our takings: four pounds, eleven shillings, and a foreign coin with a hole punched through it.

The school in Dudley wanted the orrery for a physics room, not the tent. Mr Ashdown, the headmaster, came in a grey coat and stood under the sun with his hands behind his back. He asked whether the planets were to scale. I told him they were to scale with nothing, which was true. He asked about the ring on the small planet, and I said that was Mother's touch, she liked a bit of show.

On the lorry I kept back one planet, a pitted sphere the size of a plum, and put it in my coat. The sun went on turning in the school hall for a whole term, its rays fine as lashes, and I heard the children counting them. I have the planet on my kitchen windowsill now. Its ring is a loop of copper wire, and every morning I turn it once so the light catches the dots.