Close-up of a small black lettering-style tattoo on the inner forearm of a person lying on a bed, with pink nails and a floral garment visible.

Black lettering-style tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on a bed with legs crossed, wearing a floral garment, with one arm extended toward the camera. A small black tattoo of stylised, angular marks sits on the inner forearm near the wrist. The ink is solid black on pale skin, with soft natural daylight and a simple, uncluttered background of white bedding.

Lettering Forearm Lettering Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last of the Discovery apples came down on a Tuesday, which Gran said was bad luck, though she said that about most days. I was up the long ladder at the end of Hollis Row with a bucket hooked on my elbow, and Uncle Ray was below with the barrow, swearing at a wasp that had got down his collar.

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Every basket that went down the lane to the market had a mark cut into the shed door. Gran made them with a penknife, one angular stroke for each load, a little zigzag like a hill seen from the road. Ray said it was a tally and nothing more, but I had counted them since I was small and there were nearly seven hundred, the oldest so faded you had to tip your head to catch the light. Nobody had ever told me what the first one meant.

That afternoon I found the knife in the pocket of Gran's old smock on the hook. The wood was soft where the pale heartwood showed. I stood in front of the door with the sun slanting across the yard and tried to make a mark the way she did, quick and low, without lifting the blade. It came out crooked, two strokes meeting at the wrong angle, like a letter I had half forgotten how to write.

Ray came round the side of the shed and looked at it for a long time. 'That's the one for the Pearmain year,' he said. 'She always said it was the first load she sold on her own.' He took the knife from me, cut a small sharp line beside mine so the two leaned together, and handed it back. 'Now you're in the book.'