Black and grey photo of a woman with long hair in an off-shoulder jumper, showing a solid blackwork flame tattoo on her upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black flame tattoo on an upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a woman with long wavy hair seated in a grey off-shoulder jumper and dark trousers, with her face out of frame. A small, solid black flame tattoo sits on her upper arm near the shoulder, with bold filled shapes and no visible shading. The image is monochrome and framed close, with the tattoo as the main point of interest.

Blackwork Upper arm Flame Fire

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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

The fireman who taught me the trade had a flame inked on his forearm, solid as a lump of coal, and he said it was the only honest thing about him. We were four days out of Liverpool on the Clara Vane, a tramp steamer with more rust than paint, and the firemen's mess smelt of wet wool and sulphur. Sully Brannock did not talk much below decks. He shovelled, he swore at the grates, and in the quiet watches he turned his arm under the lamp and looked at the mark as if checking it had not gone out.

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On the fifth night the port boiler started to sulk. The gauge needle crept past where it ought to sit and the feed water ran thin. Sully went down the ladder without his shirt, saying the heat was the only thing that ever felt like home, and I followed him with a bucket and a lamp I did not need. We spent three hours with the damper open and the fires roaring white, and I learned that a flame is not one thing but a hundred small decisions about air.

When the pressure settled, Sully sat on an upturned crate and laughed until he coughed. He told me the mark was for his mother, who had burned the family's last letters from the landlord in a grate in Cork so no one could read them. He said she kept one ember alive for nine years after that, carrying it from house to house in a biscuit tin. I did not believe him, and I did not ask again. Some stories are only worth the heat they give off.