Black and grey koi fish tattoo with dotwork scale shading and fine line sprigs of foliage on a forearm.

Koi fish and fine line foliage on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two koi fish swim across the forearm, one large in the centre and one partly visible at the lower edge, surrounded by delicate sprigs of leaves and a sketched frond near the top. The scales are built up with stippled dotwork shading, while the fins and outlines use crisp single lines. The palette is entirely black and grey on pale skin against a plain teal wall.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond behind the Harrow Street laundry had been drained the summer the council dug the new culvert, and Mrs Okonedo kept the two koi in a zinc bath in her scullery until the water came back. She fed them crusts from the bread bin and talked to them while she wrung out sheets. Her grandson, Tobias, thought the fish were stupid for living in a bath, and said so every Sunday.

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On the morning the bath cracked along one seam, she found the larger fish sitting still against the drain grate, its gills working slowly, the smaller one pressed to its flank. Tobias carried the bath to the back gate with his sleeves rolled up and his face set hard, and together they tipped it into the canal at the bottom of the lane. The water was brown and cold and smelled of diesel. The fish hung there a moment, stunned by the light, then turned their heads toward the weed beds under the bridge and were gone.

They walked home without speaking. At the step Mrs Okonedo stopped to tie her shoe, and Tobias saw her press one thumb to the corner of her eye. He pretended not to notice, the way she had taught him.

That evening he found a pencil on the windowsill and drew a single fern-frond on the back of his hand, then another, until the drawing ran from his wrist to his knuckles, fine and unbroken, like the trailing weed under the bridge. When the ink of the biro dried he could still see the shape of two fish in the gaps between the leaves.

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