Fine line tattoo of the word HOMESICK in capitals above a small flying saucer, placed on the inner wrist and forearm.

Homesick lettering and UFO on wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the word HOMESICK in thin, upright capital letters, with a small flying saucer drawn beneath it. The saucer has a short antenna, a curved dome line and three dots along its underside. The linework is fine and even, in black ink with no shading, against lightly freckled skin, and the design sits centrally on the inner wrist.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Word Ufo Flying saucer

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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

The last ferry has gone and the tin of shortbread is nearly empty, so you sit on the harbour wall at Ardvuill and watch a light blink far out over the Minch. It could be a trawler. Your gran always said the strange lights over the peat cuttings were signs, and you have stopped believing her, mostly. Tonight the light is not moving like a boat.

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The island has one shop with three shelves, a post office open Tuesdays, and a pub where the same six men argue about the weather. At home you would have said you were fine. Here you write letters on the backs of ferry timetables, and every one begins with the same word, pressed so hard the biro tears the card: HOMESICK. You cross it out and write it again, because it is the only thing on the page that is true.

Then the light drops, wobbling, three amber lamps under a dome, and it hangs above the slipway like a dropped pan lid. A small grey figure steps onto the concrete and asks, very politely, whether this is the road to Glasgow. You laugh until you cry. He says he has been circling for eleven years, and he shows you a photograph of his kitchen on a moon with two suns. The handwriting on the back of his own timetable is the same as yours.

You give him the spare timetable and he tucks it inside his coat as carefully as a pressed flower. Before he lifts off he taps the card and says, 'Same word.' In the morning the post van rattles up the hill. You take a fresh card from the counter, write ARDVUILL in capitals, and beneath it, very small, draw a dot for every lamp and a dome for the way home.