Black outline tattoo of a dragonfly whose body is a semicolon, above a band of outlined flowers on the wrist.

Dragonfly and semicolon on a wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black dragonfly tattoo sits on the wrist, with its body formed by a semicolon and a dot and its wings drawn as thin outlines with solid black fill along the edges. Below it, a band of shaded, outlined flowers with small dots runs around the wrist. The ink is black and grey on a light skin tone, with the photo taken straight on and the tattoo centred in the frame.

Forearm Dragonfly Semicolon Flower Wing Dot

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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

You learn the island's weather from the gulls. On the third morning the ferry is cancelled, and you sit on the harbour wall with the tin of tea your nan left behind, the one she never let anyone open. Inside, under the tea, is a letter in her square capitals. Ruth, it says, the boat is still on the mooring at Skerry Slip, and so is the dragonfly I cut for you. Do not let the rain take the paint off.

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The letter has a strange mark in it. Where a full stop should close the sentence about the boat, there is a semicolon, and beneath it a single dot, as if she had started one thought and decided to carry it on. You remember the summer she taught you to read the ink on a fisherman's tally, how each stroke leaned into the wind. Nan drew dragonflies on everything: the backs of invoices, the steamed windows of the chip shop, the margins of the church notice board. She said a dragonfly was just a comma that had learned to fly.

You walk the cliff path with the wind shoving at your back. The slip is empty except for the boat, its name half scraped away, and on the mooring post a faded blue mark. The wings are worn and the body is smudged where the salt has crept under the paint. You run a thumb over it and find the ridge of the dot, then the curl of the tail. It is not finished. You suspect it was never meant to be.

You untie the rope. The tide is turning, and the hull knocks gently against the post as if asking whether you are ready. You are not, but you step aboard anyway and push off, and behind you the gulls go quiet, the way they do when a sentence is about to continue.