Black geometric arrow tattoo with a crescent, circles and dots on a woman's upper back, with her face out of frame.

Geometric arrow tattoo on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical black tattoo of an arrow-like motif sits centrally on the upper back, built from a solid triangular head, a small circle, a crescent shape with a ring and fine horizontal lines, and a forked tail with dots above and below. The shapes are bold and solid with thin linework for the connecting lines and dots, set against pale skin. The subject is photographed from behind with wavy blonde hair and a white lace top, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Geometric Back Arrow Crescent Circle Dot Geometric shape Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman at Harrow Lock had a rule about arrows. You did not shoot one over the water unless you had a name to call it back by. Everyone in the village knew this, the way they knew not to whistle on the bridge after dark.

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When the old school reunion came round that autumn, the three women who had sat together at the back of Miss Pell's room gathered in the Crown and argued about the crescent boat. Ruth said it was a moon lying on its side. Bea said it was the boat her brother drowned in, and nobody was to speak of it. Lottie only laughed and tapped the ring at its belly, which she said was a lock gate, and then she told them how the arrow had come off the bow at the wrong moment and gone straight up into the lamplight, and nobody had seen where it came down.

They walked out to the lock together after closing. The water was black and still. Bea took a pebble from her pocket and pressed it into Ruth's palm, and Ruth understood that the fork at the tail was for the two of them still standing, and the dots above and below were for those who had not made it to the reunion. Lottie drew the bow from her shoulder, though none of them had ever seen her hold one.

The arrow flew low over the water and dropped into the boat-shaped shadow of the lock gate. The ferryman, sleeping in his hut, woke and counted three names aloud into the dark. Then he went back to sleep, because the names had been called, and that was the only rule that ever mattered.