Small black line tattoo of a light bulb-like symbol on the inside of an open hand, against a black background.

Light bulb symbol on palm

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

An open palm, photographed against a black background, with a small black tattoo near the base of the thumb. The tattoo is a simple outlined shape resembling a light bulb, with a vertical stroke through it and short crossing lines below. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the image is entirely monochrome.

Hand Light bulb Symbol Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lamp finally works, though you'll never guess who lit it. Mr Pryce came up from Swansea on the Tuesday train with a canvas bag of wire and a face like a wet Sunday. He spent three days on the chapel roof swearing at the slates, and on Thursday he called us all into the nave to watch him screw a bulb into the old bracket where the oil lamp used to hang.

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Nobody breathed. He flicked the switch on the wall and nothing happened, and Mrs Hughes said he was a fraud, and then the little filament went orange and then white, and the whole nave jumped up out of the shadows as if it had been waiting. Dad cried, which I will deny if you mention it. Pryce just wiped his hands on his trousers and said the line was the thing that mattered, not the light.

He left the next morning. Before he went he drew something for me on the back of an invoice: a bulb with a straight stem running through it and three short strokes beneath, like rungs or the teeth of a comb. He said it was the mark his mother put on everything she mended, so the owner would know whose hands had been there. I asked what the strokes meant. He said they were the bits that carry the current, and you never see them working, only what they do.

I've pinned the drawing above the sink where the oil lamp used to be. Come home at Christmas and look at it, then look at the bulb. It's still on as I write, and the light lies right across the page, so forgive the smudges. Your loving sister, Nell.