Thin black outline of a rectangle tattooed on the forearm near the wrist, with the palm turned up on a white sheet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Outlined rectangle on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single rectangle is drawn in a fine black outline on the inner forearm, close to the wrist. The linework is even and crisp, with no shading or fill inside the shape. The background is a plain white bedsheet, and the hand is partly visible and relaxed, palm up.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Rectangle Outline Square

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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

Sit yourself down by the stove, because this is a long one and the herring won't wait. Every boat in Porthlanow had her name painted on the transom, and every painter in the town knew old Amos Tregear could letter better than the rest of us put together. He had one rule, though. He never painted a name he had not heard from the owner's own mouth.

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One February a girl came up the steps from the ferry with a rolled sheet of card under her arm and asked him for a board for the Marian Lee. She wanted a rectangle and nothing else, drawn in black ink with no lettering and no gilt. Amos asked what it said. She said it said nothing yet. He took his rule and his finest brush and drew the box in one steady pass, the way his father had drawn the waterline on every hull in the yard.

She came back in March, and again in April, each time with a different story about where she had been and where she meant to go. Each time she stood at the counter tapping the empty shape with one finger. In May she brought the Marian Lee's old log book and asked him to copy its last page into the box. He did it in his neatest hand. It was the record of a crew of nine who came home from the cod grounds one short, and the name left off the list was her father's.

She read it twice, paid him in shillings the way her father used to, and hung the card above her kettle. Amos kept the spare sheet. He still draws that box on the first page of every new log he is given, and leaves it empty for whoever sails next.