Black and grey fine line constellation tattoo of connected star points on the inner forearm, shown in a black and white photograph.

Constellation tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small constellation of star points linked by fine dotted lines runs across the inner forearm. The linework is delicate and the stars are drawn as tiny dots with short rays, with the arm shown at a slight angle against a plain grey wall. The image is entirely black and grey, with a soft, even light across the skin.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Constellation Star Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ceiling of the Big Top had been painted by a man called Orrin Vale in 1952, back when the Halloway Brothers still kept forty horses and a lion that came when it was called. By the August I'm telling you about, the stars had faded to the colour of weak tea, and the fine dotted lines Orrin had run between them were flaking away like old scabs. Mum wanted them repainted. We had eleven pounds, a generator that coughed on damp mornings, and a council in Lincolnshire that had already put up the notice.

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I climbed the rigging alone one evening with a tin of gold leaf and a brush worn down to three hairs. Up there the canvas smelt of tar and mice, and the light came through the rips in soft white blades. Dad used to say the stars were only specks until someone agreed where to join them, and that was the whole trick of any sky. So I joined them. I found the pair of bright ones near the centre, the forked tail, the little spur that pointed at the trapeze, and I ran the dotted line from one to the next the way Orrin must have done, leaning out over nothing with my knees locked round the rope.

When I came down, Mum was sitting on the empty ring with her shoes off, watching the roof. She didn't say the sky looked better. She just said that the men from the council would have to stand under it for a whole minute before they could say anything at all. I believed her. We sold the generator the next week, and we still had the tent, and on still nights, if you lay flat on the sawdust with the lamps out, you could find the way the stars were meant to go.