Black and grey shaded moon phases tattooed in a row across the inner forearm, with the hand open to the right against a white wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases along a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of seven circular moon phases runs along the forearm, moving from a thin crescent on the left to a thin crescent on the right. Each moon is shaded in soft greys and black, with the fullest discs showing darker, smoother gradients. The arm is photographed against a plain white wall, with the hand extended to the right of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock at Hartwell has been chained since Michaelmas, so you tie the boat to the willow and count the nights instead. Your father left an almanac in the galley drawer, its margins full of his small pencil ticks, and you keep the habit the way you keep the stove lit: without asking why. Each evening you walk to the towpath and look up, and each evening the moon has moved on a little from the one before.

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The first week it was only a paring, a thin white thumbnail hooked over the reeds. You drew it in the almanac as a curve and wrote the date beside it. Then the light grew fat over the lock-keeper's cottage, then fat enough to silver the mud, and you drew full discs and shaded them with the side of your pencil until the paper shone. Mooring ropes creaked. Somewhere a dog gave up barking.

On the seventh night the moon was a paring again, lying on its back above the poplars, and you understood that you had been waiting for the gate to open when the water had been running under the boat the whole time. You cast off before dawn. The current took the hull sideways, then straight, and the chained lock fell behind you in the mist. In the almanac you drew one last small circle, and then, because you wanted it to be true, you rubbed it with your thumb until it was grey.

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