Fine line tattoo of a sphere made from overlapping black loops, centred on the upper back.

Overlapping loop sphere on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare upper back shows a tattoo of a sphere built from many overlapping black loops and ellipses. The linework is thin and even, with the lines crossing at varied angles to suggest a globe or orbit. The design is in black ink on pale skin, centred in the frame, with a faint reddened area around it.

Fine line Back Sphere Loop Line Circle Orbit

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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

The rain has found the gap in your awning again, and it drips onto the spool of grey twine you are trying to rewind. Old Mr Okonkwo at the next pitch, selling hairclips and cracked mirrors, says the twine has been tangled since his wife bought it in 1979. You keep winding anyway, because your hands need something to do while the market empties.

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A girl in a yellow mac stops at your table and asks whether you can untangle a ball of black thread her grandfather wound. He drew the world with it, she says, loop after loop, one for every sea he crossed on the merchant ships. She holds it out like a small planet. You turn it over and find the ends buried in the middle, every strand crossing another at a different angle, and you decide it cannot be undone without cutting.

So you cut it. You take the scissors from your apron and snip one loop free, and the whole thing loosens at once, the way a knot does when you finally find its heart. The girl laughs, and rain runs off the end of her nose. She pays you with a coin warm from her pocket and walks off into the dark with the loose ball bumping against her hip.

Later, packing up, you find the snipped length caught in the wheel of your trolley, a single black thread. You wind it round two fingers and it keeps its shape, a tiny orbit that goes on turning in your coat pocket long after the stalls have gone dark.