A black outline tattoo of a brain with red shading at its centre and the word think beneath it, on an upper arm, examined under a purple UV lamp.

Brain outline tattoo with the word think

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A gloved hand holds a purple UV lamp over a black outline tattoo of a brain, with red shading in the central area. The word think sits in small lettering beneath the brain, and a gloved finger points at the design. The skin is lit by the UV light against a pale background.

Upper arm Brain Word Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have worked the lost property hatch at Hollins Cross for eleven years, and you know the sound an umbrella makes when nobody is coming back for it. Today there is a stack of grey cardboard tickets and a sealed tin of boiled sweets. The 14:20 to Carlisle has been cancelled twice, and the platform boards still say Please Wait in that patient amber way they have.

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Then a man in a navy anorak slides a fountain pen across the counter and asks whether anyone has handed in a notebook. Its cover is brown, its spine taped twice. Inside, he says, is every route he has ever planned, all in red biro, and he cannot remember where he left it. You turn the pages under the strip light. Timetables, connections, a pencilled list of platform numbers. Then a drawing of a brain, its folds carefully inked, the middle shaded red where the clever bits would be. Beneath it, in small capitals pressed hard into the paper, the single word THINK.

You ask him when he last thought about it. He laughs, then stops, because the honest answer is the same as the answer to most things: on the train, on the way here, somewhere between the ticket barrier and the kiosk. You close the notebook and hand it back with the pen.

Outside, the 14:20 finally sighs onto the platform. You watch the doors open for a woman with a pushchair and a rolled-up map, and you notice that your own ticket is still in your hand, folded into a tight square, its destination printed face down.