Two matching bold black swirl tattoos sit on the inner wrists of two arms, one on each side of the image.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching flame swirls on inner wrists

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two near-identical black tattoos of curved, flame-like swirls sit on the inner wrists, one on each arm. The solid black linework tapers at the ends and the design is shown in plain black ink with no shading. The arms cross over a dark and white chequered floor, with the palms turned upwards and the tattoos placed close together.

Forearm Flame Swirl Matching pair Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The paraffin lamp on the wheelhouse hook has gone out twice since Scarborough, and Harry Moyle has stopped pretending it's the wind. You wipe the glass with your sleeve and try again. The wick catches in a small blue tongue that curls back on itself the way the bow wave does when the trawler turns into the swell. You hold your hands up to the light, and the two marks on the insides of your wrists take the flame the same way, black as spilled tar.

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You got them the spring after your mother's boat went down off Filey, when the lifeboat men brought back her lamp and nothing else. Your sister Ada sat in the Co-op car park with a biro and drew the shape on the back of a fish receipt until it was right. Then she said, you take the left and I'll take the right, and the needle went in at a back-room counter in Bridlington while the gulls screamed over the harbour wall. It stung like a wasp. Ada didn't flinch once, which you have never forgiven her for.

Now the sky over the Dogger is the colour of wet slate, and the crew are shouting for the net to come up. Harry tells you to leave the lamp alone and see to the warp. You don't. You lift the chimney, cup the flame in your palms and feel the heat run up both wrists at once, so the marks seem to pulse in time with the engine. When the light holds steady you carry it to the rail and hold it out over the water, where the two black curves on your skin and the one bright curl in the glass lean the same way, towards home.