Black and grey tattoo of eight moon phases in a vertical row down the forearm, shown against a grey textured blanket.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phase circles on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of eight circles runs down a forearm, showing the phases of the moon from a small solid dot at the top, through an outlined full circle in the middle, back to a solid dot at the bottom. Some circles are fully filled in black, some are outlined, and one is half shaded, with clean, even linework and solid black fills. The photograph is in black and white, with the raised fist and forearm set against a textured grey blanket.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Moon Moon phase Circle Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the band packs up at the Saltergate Pavilion, the floor is sticky with spilt lemonade and the last waltz has left a trail of scuffed footprints by the fire door. Dolores from the cloakroom presses a stub of chalk into your palm and nods at the back wall. The almanac is a week behind again, she says, and you know what she means without asking. Somebody has to keep the moon honest.

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The almanac is eight painted circles stacked down the plaster, the way Harold Brierley laid them out in 1931 and his daughter touched them up every spring. A dot at the top for the new moon, a clean ring for the full, and a dot at the bottom for the dark again. You shade them from the bottom up, the way Harold taught, because he said a moon should look like it is growing even on the nights it is shrinking.

Teddy Marsh is waiting by the piano with his hat in both hands. He has asked you to dance three Saturdays running, and three Saturdays running you have told him the moon isn't ready. He asks if it will be ready by Christmas. You tell him to ask the chalk. He laughs, and the laugh goes straight into your ribs.

After the lights go out you stand under the almanac with chalk dust grey on your fingers. The ring in the middle is still clean white, waiting for its night. You don't fill it in. You leave it empty, and go out through the fire door with the sea breathing on the sand, and Teddy's hat on the railing where he forgot it, the brim wet with the first of the rain.