Small black fine line tattoo of a light bulb with a filament on the inner wrist, shown in a black and white photo of a raised hand with rings.

Light bulb on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outlined light bulb with a filament drawn inside sits on the inner wrist. The linework is thin and even, with the base of the bulb shaded in solid black detail. The black and white photo shows a raised hand with silver rings against a dark brick wall, with the tattoo placed centrally in the lower frame.

Fine line Forearm Light bulb

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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 rain has got under the awning again, and the bulbs on the trestle table are beading like something sweating. You wipe the glass with the hem of your coat and hold up the one with the cracked collar, the old carbon-filament kind your gran called proper light. Its wire glows the colour of weak tea. Nobody on this market buys those any more. They want the cold white ones that hum.

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A man in a yellow cagoule stops, squints, and asks whether anything you sell will last. You tell him nothing lasts, but these have outlived three landlords and a flood. He laughs, buys two, and walks off with them wrapped in yesterday's paper, carried like eggs.

When the stalls start packing up, the drains gurgle and the gutters run silver under the lamps. You switch off the one bulb you kept lit, and in the dark its filament still hangs in the glass, a thin line that refuses to stop being a line. You think of the flat above the chip shop where you learned to fit a bulb with wet hands, and of the woman who told you that light is only a wire that agreed to get hot.

You lock the cash tin, fold the cloth, and leave the last bulb on the table, unplugged, so whoever comes by in the morning will find it waiting.