Black and grey compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W letters on the forearm, with shaded star points inside a circular ring.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose sits centrally on the inner forearm, with N, E, S and W letters at the cardinal points. The design uses fine black linework for the outer ring and star points, with grey shading that gives the central star depth. The ink is black and grey, set against a plain cream sleeve and a patterned background.

Traditional Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose Star Letter

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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

Dear Priya,

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I still have the atlas you lent me in the fifth form, the one with a coffee ring over Iceland and your name pencilled inside the cover. I saw you across the function room at the reunion, balancing a plate of cheese straws, and I meant to walk over and say so. Instead I spent twenty minutes listening to Dean Mulholland describe his mortgage. This letter is the apology I owed you then.

Do you remember Mr Halloran's geography room, the wind rose poster on the back wall? He made us draw our own in biro, a star with eight points and the letters placed where they belonged. Yours came out lopsided, the E crowded up against the S, and when I laughed you said a compass only needs to know which way home is, not where the letters sit. I thought that was rubbish at fourteen. I have come round to it.

Last spring I took that old drawing to a studio above a bakery in Leeds and asked the artist to copy it onto my forearm. She traced the outer ring twice, then asked whether I wanted the letters straight. I said no, crooked, like yours. The shading in the middle star took her most of an afternoon, and when she wiped it down the lines looked as if they had always been there.

Write back and tell me which way you're facing these days. I'll bring the atlas to the next reunion and hand it over with the cheese straws, if you promise to sit next to me.

Love, Ruth