Black and white photo of a small fine line outline paper plane tattoo on the inner wrist, with the palm facing up.

Paper plane on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline drawing of a paper plane sits on the inner wrist of a hand held palm up, with black French-tip nail polish visible. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the tattoo is drawn in black ink against the skin. The photograph is monochrome, with the wrist and cuff of a striped sleeve filling the lower part of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Paper plane

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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 third plane came down the river on a Tuesday, nose first into the reeds below Hatherley Lock. I fished it out with the boathook while Dad was still arguing with the lock gate, and smoothed it flat on the cabin roof. It was folded from a page of a shipping manifest, the columns of coal tonnage still showing through the creases, and someone had written on one wing in careful pencil: Mind the weir.

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The first two had said much the same. Keep your head down under the bridge. Dad said it was kids on the towpath, a bit of mischief, and I believed him until the fourth one landed on the step with a drawing of a lock keeper on it, sour-faced, wearing a cap like Dad's. We kept the planes in a biscuit tin under the bunk, and I started checking the reeds every morning before the kettle went on.

On the Saturday I folded a reply from the back of the coal tally and threw it hard upstream, past the lock, the way you'd skim a stone. It caught the wind off the sluice, rose over the wall and dropped onto the towpath. A boy in a red hat picked it up, read it, and looked straight at the barge. Then he ran off with it held out in front of him, as if it might still fly.

That was the last one. Dad says the river keeps reeds, not secrets. We cast off that evening with the tin stowed and the tiller warm under my hand. The wind came up behind us, carrying something pale and small that looped once over the water and settled, wing-tip first, beside our hull.