Colour koi fish and flower tattoo with black linework on a man's left forearm and upper arm, beside a black t-shirt with a white mask print.

Koi and flowers on a forearm sleeve

Japanese · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A man wears a black t-shirt with a large white mask print, and his left arm shows a tattoo sleeve running from the upper arm to the wrist. The lower forearm holds a coloured fish, likely a koi, and flowers in orange, green and dark tones, with the upper arm carrying black outline sketch work. The photograph is a plain studio shot on a white background, with the head cropped out of frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The 7.40 ran late again, so I had a quarter of an hour on the bench before I could lock up, and I spent it fishing Mr Pardoe's big orange carp out of the lavender bed. He had gone over the edge of the pond in the night, the way he always threatens to, and was lying on the gravel by the milk churns looking thoroughly put out. I carried him back in the bucket we use for signal oil, which he did not appreciate, and he went straight to the lily pads as if nothing had happened.

You would laugh at the place. Carrow Junction has three platforms, a ticket hatch nobody has opened since the Beeching men came through, and a garden between platforms two and three that Mr Pardoe has kept for thirty-one years. The pond is no bigger than a kitchen table. Six koi live in it: the gold one, the red-and-white, and the old dark one that never comes up for bread. Marigolds and some trailing green spill over the stone edge, and the whole thing smells of wet iron when the 9.12 pulls out.

The council letter came on Monday. They want the pond filled in for a bicycle rack by the autumn. I wrote back that the fish were lucky, that they had outlived two signalmen and a flood, and that I would be happy to explain this at the next meeting if they cared to bring a bucket. I have not heard back. Yesterday evening I stood on the footbridge and watched the orange one rise under the last train's shadow, slow as a thought, and drift to the surface where the marigold petals had gathered. I think he knew we were both still here.

Love, Ruth

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