Close view of a black tribal-style tattoo running across a forearm and onto the back of the hand, with a silver watch worn on the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal tattoo on a forearm and hand

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black tattoo of bold tribal bands and angular geometric shapes covers the forearm and extends onto the back of the hand. The linework is solid black with some fine detail in the pattern, and the image is in black and grey with a warm skin tone. The hand rests on a steering wheel inside a car, with a silver wristwatch with a turquoise inlay partly covering the forearm.

Blackwork Forearm Hand Tribal pattern Geometric pattern Band Wristwatch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Matiu,

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The boat came in on Thursday with the mail and the silver watch you left on the windowsill, which I have been meaning to post back since spring. Don't laugh. Nobody on this island tells the time by the sea any more, the way Grandfather did. Everyone wants a watch now, and everyone wants one that looks like it cost more than it did.

Teuira finished the last of the bands on the old bench behind the net shed the week before you left. You remember how she worked, short strokes, never looking up from the needle while she talked about the weather and who had married whom. The black bands run from the wrist toward the knuckle, and the angles at the edges are hers, little teeth that look like a saw until you see they are stepping stones. She said a line should always be left open at one end so the story can carry on without you. I thought it was nonsense then.

I walked out to the harbour wall this morning and counted the grooves the tide has worn into the rock over longer than anyone has been alive. Four hundred and twelve, I think. I stopped at four hundred and thirteen, because that one was new, and I could not tell whether the sea had made it or Teuira's grandson, who has started carving on Sundays when he should be asleep. Write when you reach the city. Tell me what the lights look like at night, and whether anyone there knows the difference between a band and a border.

Your sister, Hine