Two forearms with matching black lettering of latitude and longitude coordinates in a simple serif font, the lower line rotated upside down in the photo.

Latitude and longitude coordinates on two forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The upper forearm shows the text 49° 48' 54.31" N in black, and the lower forearm shows 93° 13' 14.40" W, which appears upside down from this viewpoint. The lettering is thin, even and crisp, with no shading. The photo is taken straight on against a plain skin tone and a blue fabric background.

Lettering Forearm Coordinates Number Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The first pin went into the rock at a quarter to eleven, the way Harriet wanted it, though the wind off the lake kept lifting the brass cap from her thumb. Tom held the theodolite steady and read the numbers aloud while I wrote them in the ledger on my knee. Forty-nine degrees, forty-eight minutes, fifty-four point three one north. Nobody at the office had ever asked us to be so exact about a rock that would be under water by spring.

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The second point sat across the narrows, on the far bank where the maps stopped agreeing with each other. We rowed over with the second pin rattling in a biscuit tin. Harriet insisted on taking the western bearing herself, and when she sat down across the table from me to write it up, she copied the figures out from her side, so they ran backwards and upside down to my eyes. I turned the ledger round until they made sense. Ninety-three degrees, thirteen minutes, fourteen point four west. Two points, one line between them, and somewhere beneath the water a straight edge neither of us would ever stand on together.

When the lake rose in April the rock went under first, then the tin, and the ledger stayed dry in my oilskin for thirty years. Some evenings I still turn it round to read her hand the way she wrote it, the figures standing on their heads, both of us measuring the same distance from opposite banks.