Black and grey realism forearm tattoo of a silhouetted man on a bridge, a domed building with spires and a pocket watch, with script lettering above.

Pocket watch and city skyline on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A silhouetted man in a hat stands on a railed bridge, facing a large domed building with spires under a cloudy sky. A detailed pocket watch with Roman numerals sits in the lower foreground, and script lettering runs across the top of the piece. The work uses smooth grey shading and soft tonal gradients in black ink only, with the watch and bridge railings carrying the sharpest detail.

Realism Lettering Forearm Man Silhouette Hat Bridge Spire City Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Script Cloud Skyline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dunstan Reeve had worked nights on Ward 7 for nineteen years and still checked the clock above the nurses' station before he checked anything else. At ten past three the corridor lights dimmed to their long, humming half-strength, and the building settled into the sound of drip stands and someone's radio left on low in a side room. He took his father's pocket watch from his waistcoat, thumbed open the brass lid, and compared it with the wall. They agreed. They always did, as long as he wound it at the start of every shift.

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From the window at the end of the corridor you could see the river and, beyond it, the great domed parliament building lit gold against the cloud. His father had sworn the dome was the only honest thing in the city, because it never pretended to be anything but a copy of something older. Dunstan didn't believe that, but he liked the sentiment. Tonight the cloud sat low and grey and the building looked as though it was sinking into it. Mrs Okafor in bed four had asked him twice whether it was morning yet.

At half past three the bell for bed nine went. Old Mr Calloway had been drifting since supper, and when Dunstan reached him the breathing had gone long and uneven. "Is it late?" Calloway asked. "Nearly four," Dunstan said, and then, because it seemed the thing to do, he held the watch against the man's palm so he could feel the ticking. Calloway smiled and said his wife used to do that. Then he slept, and at ten to four he did not wake.

Dunstan wrote the time in the log, then sat on the edge of the chair with the watch open in his hand. He thought about the bridge his father used to cross every morning on the way to the docks, always stopping halfway to check the time, always standing a little apart from the crowd as though waiting for someone who had already gone on ahead. At six the first light came up grey over the river. Dunstan closed the watch, put it away, and went to find Mrs Okafor her tea.