Fine line black ink tattoos of a ringed planet and a small rocket on an ankle, with a red blanket and a bed visible behind the foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Planet and rocket on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two small tattoos sit on the ankle: a ringed planet above and a tiny rocket with a window and pointed nose cone below. Both are drawn in thin, single-weight black outlines with no shading. The photo is taken against a dark patterned ceiling and a red blanket, with dark nail polish on the toes.

Fine line Ankle Planet Rocket Space

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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 biscuit tin on the windowsill has been rattling since breakfast, which means the rocket inside has decided it is ready, whether or not you are. You take it down and shake it gently. Something clicks like a loose tooth. Your grandfather built it from a cereal box, a milk bottle top and three lengths of bent wire, and he swore it could reach the ringed planet above the oak trees if the wind sat in the right quarter.

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The edge of the forest begins where the last cottage ends, past the stile and the pump nobody has used since the war. Every evening you walk to the first birch with the tin under your arm and the brass planet on its string bumping against your hip. The villagers call the path the Long Way, though it is only a hundred paces. Mrs Ashdown at the post office says the forest keeps whatever falls off the sky. She is not wrong about the bottle tops.

Tonight the wind turns. You feel it come through the trees, cold and sudden, and the tin lifts itself out of your hands as though someone had called its name. It drifts up past the rooks, nose cone aimed at the planet, its one round window glowing the colour of a struck match. You run after it until the roots catch your boots and you sit down hard in the moss.

When you look up, the rocket has stopped at the height of the highest branch, turning slowly as if checking its bearings. Then it dips its nose once, like a man tipping his hat, and sets off east towards the lights of the next town. You stay where you are with your palms full of moss and the brass planet cold in your fist. The tin will be back on the windowsill by morning, you are certain of that, and you are less certain you will be the one allowed to keep it.