Large city skyline tattoo with tall buildings, a tram and a moon on a man's upper arm and shoulder, in black, grey and teal ink with paint-splatter drips.

City skyline and tram on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a city street with tall buildings, a lit tram or train carriage at the lower right, and a moon at the upper right. Black and grey shading and solid black areas define the architecture, with loose teal wash and dripping black splatters running down the lower part of the design. Warm yellow window lights add small points of colour against the dark ink, and the composition wraps across the upper arm toward the shoulder.

Upper arm Shoulder City Skyline Building Skyscraper Moon Splatter Drip Reflection

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mags,

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I'm writing this on the back of a timetable because the kettle has boiled dry twice and I can't sit still. The rain came down all afternoon, the kind that turns Harcourt Street into a mirror, and the last tram kept its lamps lit long after it should have gone to the depot. I stood under the shelter counting the windows as it passed, the way you used to count gas lamps on the way to school.

Thirty-one lit windows, and not one of them mine. That's the sort of thing I can't tell anyone without sounding daft.

Here's the news, such as it is. Mr Okonedo at the pawnshop finally sold the moon clock, the one with the painted face that hung over his door and never kept the right time. A woman in a green coat bought it for her son, she said, and paid in coins she'd saved in a sugar tin. I liked her. She looked at that clock as if it owed her money.

I've decided to stop waiting for the tram to bring anyone back. Tomorrow I'm walking the long way, past the tall buildings with the black ink running down their sides, past the bridge where the water goes the colour of tea. If you come up for Christmas, bring your good boots.

Love, Nell