Black geometric linework tattoo of stacked diamonds, a point and dotted rungs running down the upper back between the shoulder blades.

Geometric vertical tattoo on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical geometric design of nested diamonds, a pointed arch, dotted rungs and a downward arrow sits centrally on the upper back, below the nape of the neck. The linework is dark and fairly fine, with small dots placed along the sides of the central column. The image is a close view from behind in warm, slightly filtered tones, with the subject's face out of frame.

Geometric Back Diamond Triangle Arrow Dot Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The old keeper on Scarrow Skerry went blind in the spring, so it fell to his granddaughter Morag to climb the tower each dusk and trim the wick. She was eleven and did not like the dark stair. Every night she counted the rungs under her breath, and every night she lost count at the ninth.

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Her grandfather had a tally stick cut with a pattern along its length. At the top was a pointed arch like a chapel door, then a diamond holding a smaller diamond, then a column of dots set on either side of a thin rod, and at the bottom an arrow pointing down. "Read it from the top and it tells you where the rock is," he said, running his thumb over the cuts. "Read it from the bottom and it tells you how far you have come." Morag thought this was the sort of thing old men said to keep children quiet, but she took the stick up the tower anyway.

On the night of the north wind the lamp guttered twice before she reached the gallery. Below, the sea had turned the colour of slate, and out past the reef a fishing boat from Harran's Ness was coming in blind, its lantern swinging wildly. Morag trimmed the wick with shaking fingers, then pressed the tally stick to the glass and counted the dots aloud, nine on the left and nine on the right. The arrow pointed straight down at the place where the water broke white over the shoal. The beam swept out and found it. The boat turned away from the rock and came round the long way, and a man on its bow raised his arm to her.

In the morning she cut the pattern into the lintel above the tower door, the arch at the top and the arrow at the bottom, and she made nine dots on each side without losing count once. Her grandfather came up the stair slowly, one hand on the wall, and found the marks with his fingertips in the grey light. He did not say anything. He only nodded, the way he did when the tide turned on time.