Black ink tattoos on two inner wrists showing passport-style stamps, the word wanderlust in script and a compass rose, in fine line style.

Passport stamps, wanderlust and compass on wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two inner wrists are shown side by side, one with a rectangular stamp and a triangular stamp outlined in black, the other with the word wanderlust in cursive script above a compass. The linework is thin and even, with the compass drawn in fine detail and light shading on the dial. The tattoos are in black ink only, set against a pale, softly lit background.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Wanderlust Compass Script Triangle Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink pad at the Carrow Street ferry office had gone dry by three in the morning, so I licked my thumb and pressed the rectangular stamp onto the back of a ticket instead. The date came out grey, 2 July, the year rubbed soft at one edge. Nobody checks the back of a ticket. That was the first thing Mrs Ioannou taught me when I took the night desk, and the second was never to read the names aloud.

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Rain came sideways off the estuary and rattled the shutter. A man in a wet raincoat slid a folded map across the counter, its corners softened by travel, and asked whether the boat to Gull Island still ran. I told him it had stopped in October. He nodded as if that were the answer he'd expected and asked me to stamp the map anyway, just under the coastline, where the compass rose sat in the corner with its needle pointing somewhere past the margin.

I did it. The triangle was the old pattern from the harbour board, the one with the crooked wave lines, and it sat askew on the paper the way they always do when your hand is cold. He looked at it for a long time. Then he folded the map and said the rose was the only thing on it he trusted, because the streets moved every time he came back.

When the ferry lights went out across the water at half past four, I opened the ledger and wrote the date beside his name in pencil, just in case someone came asking. Outside, the first bus hissed up Carrow Street. I thought about the needle, still pointing its one fixed way while the city rearranged itself around it, and I stamped the back of my own hand, very lightly, so I would have somewhere to start in the morning.