Two small fine line black tattoos near the wrists, one a single vertical stroke and the other two parallel strokes, shown on two forearms.

Matching small numeral tattoos on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two small tattoos sit on the inner forearms near the wrists. The left mark is a single vertical stroke and the right mark is two parallel vertical strokes, both in thin black linework with solid ink. The background is dark clothing with a printed rose and a small logo, and the framing is close, with both tattoos clearly in focus.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Roman numeral Vertical line Minimal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You hold your wrist up under the lamp at the Pier Ballroom, turning it the way you turn a dance card, looking for the ink that Mags swore would fade by Whitsun. It hasn't. The single stroke on Sid's wrist and the double on yours sit like two bars of a tune nobody else in Margate can hum. He made you promise in the back room on Harbour Street, with the needle wrapped in cotton and the bottle of Indian ink balanced on a tin of Ovaltine, that the single line would be his. You told him he could have it, provided you got the double.

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The band starts a foxtrot nobody knows the words to, and Sid steps on your toes in the first bar, the way he has every Saturday since March. He counts under his breath. One, two, and you let him think he's leading. The floor is thick with cigarette smoke and talc, and the girls by the pillars are watching to see who will dance twice in a row. You do, and then a third time, because the trumpet player has winked at you and because you have never once in your life been told where to stand.

When the lights come up at eleven, the attendant stands at the door with his torch and checks everybody out by hand. He takes Sid's wrist first, then yours, and holds them side by side under the bulb. He reads them the way the girl at the desk reads a dance card, lips moving. One, he says, and then, looking at you over his glasses, two. Sid laughs so hard he has to lean on the coat rail, and you walk out into the cold with your arm through his, the ink still dark enough to show.