Fine line black outline tattoo of the state of Michigan with a small heart on the upper arm, with a cream sleeve pushed up against a teal background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Michigan state outline on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of the state of Michigan, showing both peninsulas and the surrounding lake shorelines, is tattooed on the outer upper arm. A small solid black heart sits on the lower peninsula to the east. The ink is a thin, even black line on smooth skin, set against a pale sleeve and a plain teal background.

Fine line Upper arm Outline Heart Map

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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

You arrive at the boarding house on the Straits road in late October, when the lake has gone the colour of pewter and Mrs Dunmore has already shuttered every window but yours. She hands you a key on a wooden fob carved like a lighthouse and says the water has been restless all week. Upstairs the wallpaper is printed with tiny paddle steamers, and on the mantel someone has left a tea towel stamped with a map of the state, the upper peninsula hooked like a crooked finger.

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Over supper you learn that the lodger before you, a bookbinder called Aldous Penhale, drew that outline every night on the backs of his rent receipts until he could do it blindfold. He could do the Thumb, Mrs Dunmore says, and the bay where the water sulks, and the little knuckle of the lower shore. He never got the eastern coast quite right, though, because he kept stopping to press his pencil into the same spot near the water, where he had once been happy for a fortnight in June.

In the bureau drawer you find a stack of his receipts, and the top one holds the whole state in a single unbroken pencil line, no lifting, no second try. In the margin he has written: Keep going until the lake stops being a border. You fold it into your coat pocket and walk down to the pier before breakfast. The water is flat and bright, a gull stands on a post, and you trace the shoreline in your head with your thumb through the cloth, the way you would follow a road you already know.