Small black and grey balloon tattoo with a fine trailing string on the inner forearm, softly shaded.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Balloon on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small balloon hangs from a thin, single-line string on the inner forearm, with the balloon's body rendered in soft grey shading and a light highlight. The linework is delicate and the string curves gently downward. The design is in black and grey with no colour ink, and it sits alone against plain skin with a grey knitted sleeve at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Balloon String

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, Ashby Market Field. Eleven people in the tent tonight, two of them the Harcourt twins who had only come in to get out of the rain. Mrs Pell's lion has stopped roaring when the band strikes up, which Mother says means it has given up on us too. I sold nine balloons before the interval, all red, because red is what the gas cylinder had left in it.

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The last one is grey. I bought it off a stall in Leicester for a penny and a promise, and it has never taken a proper colour. One side has a soft shine, like a pebble after rain, and the other has gone the colour of dishwater. Nobody buys a grey balloon. I tied it to the tent pole out of spite, and it has bobbed there all week like something waiting to be asked.

Saturday. Walked the field after the last show with the string wound round two fingers. Father used to say nothing is worthless, only badly priced. A boy in a green anorak stood at the gate watching the cages go up the ramp, and I held the grey one out to him without thinking. He did not thank me. He took the string the way you would take a hot cup, looked up at the sky, then opened his hand.

It went up slowly, as if it had to think about it, and the line came snaking down through the wet grass to lie at my boots. I did not pick it up. I stood there until the boy had gone, and the only thing left in the field was that thin dark thread, drawn out straight and then, as the wind caught it, curving gently away.