Black ink tattoo of a vertical column of planetary and celestial symbols running down the inside of a forearm.

Column of planetary symbols on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of nine black symbols runs down the inner forearm, including circles, crosses, a crescent and a sun-like circle with a dot. The linework is clean and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The skin is lightly haired and the arm rests on a white bedsheet with navy polka dots, with the hand visible at the bottom of the frame.

Forearm Crescent moon Circle Cross Glyph

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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

Mrs Penhale kept the book on the hall table at Saltcombe, beside the brass bell nobody rang. Each lodger signed it in pencil, and each night she drew one small sign beside their name, because her mother had told her a house should know where its people were. Her mother had also said the sea was only ever a sky lying down, so Mrs Penhale did not hold much with charts.

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The summer the Hollis brothers came, the elder, Tom, sat up with her in the kitchen and said the signs looked like a secret code. She told him they were older than codes. Far out, she said, were the cold ones that took the longest to turn, and nearer in were the quick ones that changed their minds each week. Tom asked which one was the house. She pointed at the circle with the dot in its middle and said that was the sun, and the sun was whoever stayed up last and kept the kettle warm.

Tom went out at dawn in the grey boat and did not come back with the tide. His brother waited on the step with the book open on his knees. When the fog lifted, Mrs Penhale found a new sign written in the margin in careful pencil, a circle with a cross through it, which was the earth, and under it a single word: home.

She did not rub it out.