Fine black linework tattoo of a single vertical line with two heartbeat-style spikes running down the inside of a forearm.

Heartbeat line on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single thin black line runs down the length of the forearm, with two small spikes resembling a heartbeat trace at its upper and lower sections. The linework is crisp and even, with no shading or fill, and the ink is solid black against pale skin. The composition is centred on the forearm, with a grey jeans-clad body and a green top in the background.

Fine line Forearm Heartbeat Ecg line Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margit had the chart drum turning before the ferry was out of the harbour mouth. The pen on the tide gauge scratched its single black line across the paper, rising and falling with the swell that came in under the breakwater, and she watched it the way her father had watched the sea, without expecting anything from it.

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The gauge had been her father's and his father's before him. Every morning she changed the paper, wound the clock and copied the readings into the ledger in pencil, because ink was for things that could not be undone. On the island there were eleven houses, a school with four children, and one nurse who came over on Thursdays. The line on the chart was the only thing that told the truth about the water. Some days it lay flat as a slate. Other days it jumped twice in an hour, a small sharp spike, then calm again, as if the sea had remembered something.

On the Tuesday after the storm, the spikes came close together and she sat with the paper in her lap until the light went. She rang the mainland harbourmaster. He said the surge was nothing, the tide was high and the wind had dropped. She said that was what the water always said before it came up the steps. He laughed, kindly, and hung up.

By morning the line had settled. She folded the sheet, pencilled the readings, and walked down to the slipway where the boats were pulled up with their bows to the wall. Nothing had come over the stones. She stood there a long while, reading the sea the way she read the chart, and then she went back up the hill to put the kettle on.