Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a ringed planet resting on a hand, placed on the upper arm near the shoulder.

Dotwork Saturn held in a hand on the upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A ringed planet, resembling Saturn, floats above an open hand that appears to cradle or lift it, with a second finger reaching up towards the rings. The planet and hand are built entirely from stippled dots, giving soft shading on the sphere and the fingers, while crisp outlines define the rings and knuckles. The design is set in black ink and greys against pale skin, with the shoulder and upper arm curving around the composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad spent three weeks on the planet, working a dressmaker's pin across a square of pale card a dot at a time, because he said a wedding wanted something that cost somebody their patience. It rode to the registry office in a shoebox on the back seat of my Corsa, Saturn no bigger than a satsuma, its rings cut from a biscuit tin and glued on slightly crooked.

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He was meant to read a poem. Instead, when the registrar asked whether anyone had words, he stood up with the box under his arm and said nothing for so long that Nadia's gran started to cough. Then he opened the lid and lifted the planet out onto his flat palm, the way you'd lift a sleeping bird.

'Rings are just rubble,' he said. 'Stuff that never got round to being a moon. It hung about the same spot for millions of years because it couldn't decide.' He looked at the bride, then at the rings, then at his own hand. 'Nadia, you can have it. It doesn't need holding up. It only needs somebody to stand under it.'

Nadia crossed the carpet, slid her fingers beneath his palm, and the two of them raised the planet together while the registrar waited with her pen lifted. Nobody in the room breathed, and the card didn't so much as tilt.

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