Black and grey realism tattoo on a forearm showing a detailed eye above a pocket watch with Roman numerals, with cracked skin lines between them.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eye and pocket watch on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic eye sits near the top of the forearm, with cracked, torn-looking lines running beneath it. A pocket watch with Roman numerals sits lower on the arm, and more Roman numerals appear around its edge. The shading is smooth and detailed in black and grey, and the arm is cropped against a dark background.

Realism Forearm Eye Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dorrie had the tide tables memorised by her second winter, but her grandfather's pocket watch still lived in her coat pocket, its glass cracked across the face where he had dropped it on the slipway. Every morning she wound it before the boats went out from Skerrow Harbour. He had sworn the watch kept the sea's time rather than the town clock's, and she had never found a reason to doubt him.

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The fleet went out at four that Tuesday, six boats in a ragged line past the breakwater, and the fog came down behind them like a lid. Her brother Tam was aboard the Margaret Jean. Dorrie stood on the quay with the watch open in her palm, watching the minute hand crawl toward the hour the lifeboat siren would sound if anyone was overdue. Along the wall the old men said nothing. Someone had painted an eye on the harbour board years back, a joke about the lookout, and the paint had split into a map of dried mud that the salt had never managed to wash away.

The fog lifted at nine. Five boats came in. The Margaret Jean did not, and at a quarter past ten the watch stopped, its cracked glass giving one last small tick. Dorrie stood there until the tide turned.

At noon the boat limped round the point with a dead engine and Tam waving a torn oilskin from the wheelhouse. Dorrie opened the watch and found the hands still, the numerals blurred by the wet. She did not wind it. She dropped it into the harbour, and the tide took it out past the breakwater, where the old eye on the board could keep watch over the rest of them.