Thin black outline tattoo of the Maltese islands on the inner forearm, shown against a patterned bedsheet.

Outline map of the Maltese islands on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line black outline of the Maltese archipelago, showing the main island and the smaller island to its north-west, is tattooed on the forearm. The linework is fine and even, with no shading or fill, and the skin around it looks fresh and slightly reddened. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame against a white bedsheet printed with red hearts and black and white flowers.

Fine line Forearm Map Island Outline

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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 are told the old cartographer never lifted his pen, and you believe it until the afternoon you watch him fail. The castle on the hill above Xaghra has lost its roof to a winter storm, and the wind pushes through the empty window frames as if it has business inside. He sits on a fallen block with a drawing board across his knees and an ink bottle wedged between the stones.

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'Trace the coast without stopping,' he says. 'Start at the harbour mouth and come back to it. If the line breaks, the island breaks with it.'

You do as he asks. The nib drags over the paper, past the salt pans, around the bay where the fishing boats knock together, up the crooked northern cliffs. Your hand cramps. A gull lands on the parapet and watches you as though you owe it money. Halfway round the big island you lift the pen to blow away a fleck of ink, and he sighs, not unkindly.

'Gozo was never the difficulty,' he says, nodding at the smaller shape you have yet to draw, lying low to the north-west like a dog that has followed its master home. 'The channel is. Every map made of us has drawn it wrong, one hand on the mainland and one hand on the sea.'

The line closes at last where it began. He folds the sheet into quarters and presses it into your palm, the ink still tacky, and tells you to keep it somewhere the wind cannot reach. Outside, the castle keeps its gaps open to the sky, and the two islands sit on the paper as one unbroken thing, which is the only way anyone has ever managed to draw them.