Black ink compass rose with a wheel-style centre, N, E, S and W letters and two lines of coordinates, tattooed on the inner forearm.

Compass rose with coordinates on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a compass rose with arrow points in all eight directions, a ship's wheel style centre and the letters N, E, S and W. Two lines of coordinates in a serif typeface follow the curve of the arms beside the design. The linework is solid black with no colour, and the image is a close, straight-on photograph against a plain skin background.

Forearm Compass Compass rose Coordinates Wheel Arrow Lettering

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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 Tom, the roses along the south wall have finally finished their second flush, and I spent the morning on my knees with the secateurs cutting back what the wind had left. Mrs Haddow from the cottage asked after you on Sunday. I told her you were somewhere off the Carolinas, which is where your last card said you were, and she said that was a long way to be from a mother's tea.

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Your compass is still on the shed door, the one you painted the winter you were twelve, with the wheel in the middle copied from the chart in Grandad's cabin. The rain lifted the paint off the S last week, so yesterday I went out with a wire brush and a tin of linseed. Round the edge of the arms I found the numbers you scratched in with a nail, the ones you said were where you wanted to be buried if the sea ever took you. I know you were joking. I still went round them slowly, the way you'd handle something that might tear.

The bed by the pond is planted now. I put in sunflowers in a single row, all of them turned to face the lane, because that is where your bicycle used to go and I have never been able to stop looking that way at teatime. The bees found them on Thursday. The gardener at the big house says it's a waste of good ground for a single row, and I told him it was the only row I had the heart for.

I have left the shed door on the latch and the needle of the wheel pointing west, where the weather has been coming in from. Write when the post reaches you, even if it's only a line. Tell me which way you're headed, and I'll tell you which way the wind is blowing here. Your loving sister, Ruth.