Upper arm tattoo of a city skyline with a tram and a moon, in black and grey with teal and yellow accents and ink splatter.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cityscape with tram and ink splatter on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, showing a city skyline of tall buildings, a moon or sun disc and a tram with glowing yellow windows. The buildings are rendered in dense black linework and shading, with loose splashes and drips running down the lower section. Mostly black and grey, with small areas of teal wash and warm yellow light.

Blackwork Upper arm Shoulder City Skyline Building Moon Splatter Drip

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, gone one in the morning. The moon has hung over the gasworks all night like a dropped plate, and I have decided not to take it personally. Car 14 is back on the Ropewalk route after Dev coaxed the bell cord into working order, and her windows still glow the same warm yellow they did when my father drove the 9 in nineteen seventy-one. It is the only reason I stay on nights.

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The last fare was a woman with a cello case who sat at the front and talked to the glass the whole way down Corporation Street. The tall grey buildings there lean so close over the rails that the sky is only a thin strip. At the Midland stop she asked whether the line ran under the river. I told her no, only the rails, and that the river was somewhere beneath us doing what rivers do. She laughed, said it was the most honest answer she'd had all week, and stepped off into the rain without her umbrella.

At the terminus I walked the length of the car with the torch. Under seat nine I found a letter folded in four, addressed to Ruth at a flat on Harrow Lane, with no stamp. The rain had come in through the open window and bled the ink down the paper, the way the black drips run down the bottom of a city wall. I could make out "come home before the trams stop" and then nothing. I put it in the lost property tin, because it is not mine to post.

Now I am in the depot office with the kettle going. The moon sits in a puddle on the yard, cut in two where the tracks cross it, and fourteen's windows are doubled in the water too, two small yellow boxes sinking towards the drain. I keep thinking Ruth is reading the same rain tonight, somewhere on Harrow Lane, and that is probably the closest thing to a timetable I believe in.