Black linework tattoo of a music staff, notes and treble clef on a forearm, in a fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Music staff and treble clef on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black tattoo of a five-line music staff runs across the forearm, with a treble clef at one end and several musical notes, including a pair joined by beams, sitting on the staff. A row of small dots sits beneath the notes, and a stylised bar mark rises at the opposite end. The ink is solid black with thin, even lines and no colour, set against plain pale skin and a wooden door in the background.

Fine line Forearm Music staff Musical note Treble clef Sheet music Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The piano came down the lane on Tuesday on the back of Halliday's flatbed, strapped under a tarpaulin like a casualty. Dad wouldn't let anyone help him lift it, so the two of them shuffled it through the scullery door a half-inch at a time while Mum stood in the yard shouting about the frame. It is in the front room now, out of tune and smelling of damp, and I have been playing it every evening since, because nobody else will.

You will laugh, but I've been working out the Brahms you used to bang out at Christmas, the one with the bit that climbs like a gate being lifted. The keys stick on the E above middle C, so I've learned to lean on it. The lambs are down in the top field under their sheets, and the frost comes off the gutters at dawn in little beads that hang on the lip and then drop, one at a time, like someone counting bars.

Dad came in last night while I was at it and stood by the door with his cap in his hands, not saying anything. When I stopped he said the treble was flat, which it is, and then he asked if I could manage the one about the mill wheel. I said I'd need the sheet music, and he went out and came back with a folded page torn from the back of the almanac, the notes drawn in pencil by hand, a little curl at the start like a key. He said Granddad had written it out for the wedding. It's on the stand now, weighted at one corner with the cruet.

Come home for the lambing if you can. I'll leave the lamp on in the front room. The piano will still be wrong, but we can be wrong together.

Love, Ruth