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Playing card suit tattoos on wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Four people's wrists and forearms are pressed together, each showing a playing card suit: a red outlined diamond, a black outlined spade, a black outlined club and a red outlined heart. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the solid colour is limited to the outlines. The suits are spaced across the frame against a striped rug and a woven bracelet is visible on one wrist.

Fine line Forearm Diamond Spade Club Heart Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry was cancelled, so Mags dealt the last hand on an upturned crate in the terminal car park, using a rug that smelled of diesel and somebody's dog. Ruth, Dev and Priya pressed their arms together over the cards to keep the wind off, because one loose sheet would have gone over the wall into the harbour. Nobody had bet money in years. They bet with things they were willing to give away: a biro, a bus pass, a promise to phone.

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Ruth turned the first card and laughed. It was the four of diamonds, which she said was a fair omen for a woman who had walked out of three jobs and one marriage without once looking back. Dev had the queen of spades and would not say why. Priya got the ace of clubs and said it was the only card in the pack that had ever made her cry. Mags held her heart card face down and kept it that way.

They played until the tide turned the lights on the breakwater from white to amber. Each trick went to whoever was honest about something, and by midnight the biro had passed to Dev, the bus pass to Priya, and the promise to phone to Ruth, who said she would ring her sister in the morning and mean it. Mags finally flipped her card. It was the jack, the one who carries messages between the kings and queens, and nobody had expected it to be that one.

When the terminal opened at six they folded the rug and shook out the sand. Mags dragged the crate back to where it had come from, and the four of them walked off in four directions, each with a card tucked in a pocket like a ticket nobody had asked to see. Before they parted, Mags said the jack was the only card that ever got to walk between the others, which was all a messenger had ever wanted.