Black and grey realism portrait of a man in sunglasses with block lettering and red splashes, tattooed on a forearm.

Portrait and lettering sleeve on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm sleeve shows a shaded black and grey portrait of a man wearing sunglasses, alongside large mirrored block lettering that reads YOUR and friends, with a partly visible word beside it. Above the portrait, a dark ship or figure motif sits among bold black shapes and red ink splashes. The photo is taken at an angle with a dim red-lit background and a wristwatch at the wrist.

Realism Lettering Forearm Portrait Man Sunglasses Lettering Text Ship Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last train out of Harwick Pier has already gone, so you sit on the cold bench with the ticket in your fist and watch the ferry lights slide past the breakwater. Somebody's radio is playing a dance tune from the buffet, and a porter is hosing the platform as if the rain were a personal insult. Your friends were supposed to meet you here at nine. It is gone eleven.

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The man in the dark glasses finds you first. He is not a friend. He sits at the far end of the bench, lights a cigarette with a brass lighter engraved with a sailing ship, and says nothing for a long time. Then he slides a folded photograph along the slats towards you, face down, the way men in the old films do when they want you to pick it up and regret it.

The photograph shows the Mercy Jane tied up in the fog, a red slash of paint across her bow and a word scratched out beneath her name. You know the word. Everybody on the Harwick docks knew it once, before the strike, before the men who used to drink with you went quiet and started drinking alone. He taps off his ash and tells you the crossing is tonight, the north lamps will be out, and your friends have already chosen which way to jump.

You turn the photograph over. On the back, in a careful hand, someone has written the time of the next tide and a single line: Bring the watch. Across the platform the porter switches off his lamp, and the station goes dark except for the red bulb above the exit, which burns the way it always has, like a warning nobody bothered to read.