Photo of a small geometric tattoo of two crossing lines made of dots and dashes in pink, grey and dark ink, on the upper back below the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crossed dotted lines on upper back

Geometric · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two straight lines crossing at an angle, with a few small dots near the centre, on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The lines are solid dark navy or black, while the dashed segments along one arm are pink and grey, giving a dotted, pixel-like effect. The subject is photographed from behind against a teal patterned background, with a dark top covering the shoulder.

Geometric Dotwork Back Cross Line Dot Dashes Abstract shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways across the Pell Street market since eight, so you have wrapped the maps in carrier bags and tucked them under the corner of the gazebo. Your father's last survey sheet lies on top, its ink gone soft at the edges. Two lines run across it at an angle, crossing at a point he marked in red pencil, and you have spent most of the morning trying to remember what that point was.

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A man in a waxed jacket stops at the stall and traces the lines with one wet finger. "Triangulation," he says. "Two sightings meeting at a single spot." You tell him the dashes were the chain-men's pace counts, pink where they climbed the hill behind the tannery, grey where the fog came down off the river and they lost their count. He nods as though this is what he expected, and doesn't ask about the small dots gathered near the centre.

He asks what the crossing point is now. You say it's a patch of car park behind the old tannery, painted with bays for the bin lorries. Your father set his theodolite there in 1971 and swore the ground was level enough to see the sea from it. The man taps the dots. "And these?" They're the wells he never got to, you say, the ones that dried up before anyone could measure them properly.

He buys the sheet for less than it's worth and folds it along the grey dashes, carefully, the way you'd fold a letter you meant to keep. Then he walks off into the rain with the crossing point tucked under his arm. You stand a while, watching the water gather in the bin lorry bays, and you think the lines were always going to meet somewhere, whether or not anyone was standing on them.