Two forearms held together, each with a black and grey traditional-style anchor wrapped in rope on the inner forearm.

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Matching anchor tattoos on forearms

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are held together at the wrist, each showing a matching anchor tattoo with a rope coiled around the shank. The anchors are drawn in black linework with grey shading on the flukes and rope, and the tattoos sit on the inner forearms. The background is a plain pale wall and tiled floor, with the tattoos as the clear focus.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Priya, I nearly didn't go to the reunion, and then Mrs Doyle's hall smelled of floor polish and I was eleven again, sucking a stolen mint behind the coats. You were at the urn with a paper plate of Bourbons. The first thing I noticed was your arm, not your face, because the anchor was still there, its rope gone soft at the edges the way ink does after twenty-odd years.

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We got them the summer we were nineteen, in a back room above a chip shop in Whitstable where the man with the magnifier drew everything freehand. We argued about the rope. You wanted it loose and easy, I wanted it knotted tight, so he drew it coiling round the shank and then pulled it in at the top, and we paid him from the same purse and called it fair.

Then there's the bit I keep returning to. Mrs Doyle asked what we'd done with our lives and you said, "Held on, mostly," and laughed, and I laughed, and for a moment we stood by the window with our forearms pressed together, the anchors touching, exactly as we used to on the sea wall when the tide was coming in and neither of us would be the first to let go.

Anyway. I'm coming to Whitstable in June. Bring the lamp you said was for the rope, and I'll bring the tin of mints. Mine's still on my arm. I checked this morning in the bathroom mirror, the way you check a knot before you trust it. Love, Jo.

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