Close-up of a solid black triangle tattoo in a geometric blackwork style, running along the rim and inside of an ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black triangles tattooed around an ear

Geometric · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is made of solid black triangles that follow the curve of the helix and sit inside the upper ear, with some pointing inward and others in a row of small, descending triangles. Fine short lines are placed between the larger shapes, and the skin around the ear is pale with visible body hair. The ink is black only, and the composition fills the ear's outer edge while leaving the centre of the ear mostly untouched.

Geometric Blackwork Other Triangle Ear Geometric pattern Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The gate wheel finally sits true. I filed the last of the teeth at gone midnight, lamp pulled close, and the click when the pawl dropped over them was the same humming sound you used to make through your nose when you were supposed to be asleep. Father would have been insufferable about it. He kept a row of sawn triangles pinned above his bench, every one cut to sixty degrees, and told anyone who asked that a tooth is only honest if it knows exactly where its point is.

Mrs Okafor from number nine came round this afternoon wanting the church clock seen to, and she brought the drawings you left under the stair. I did not know you had been measuring the bell-rope pulleys at night. Your figures run down the margin in a neat descending row, each one a little smaller than the last, and beside them you have written "listen for the drop". I have listened. There is a half-breath in the ringing where the hammer waits to be released, and I think it is the same gap you tried to explain to me at the kitchen table the summer before you left.

I am sending the wheel down on the early train with a note wound round the spindle so the porters cannot lose it. If the wind holds, the clock will strike thirteen on Sunday, which Mrs Okafor says is nonsense, and which you would have laughed at. Do not come home for it. Just tell me, when you write, whether the teeth bite the way you meant them to.

Love, Nell