Black and grey Roman numeral lettering reading VIII IV XII on two wrists, with two pairs of hands clasped in front of the sea.

Roman numeral wrist tattoos on a beach

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two pairs of hands are clasped together in front of a sea and sandy beach in a black and white photograph. Each wrist carries a small tattoo of the Roman numerals VIII IV XII in a serif typeface, with clean, solid black linework. The composition places the hands in the foreground, with the wrist tattoos clearly visible against the pale sand and waves behind.

Lettering Forearm Roman numeral Numeral Hand Beach Sea Sand Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had already turned when Marjorie reached the slipway, and the Hallam boat was still tied under the wall with its engine ticking as it cooled. She had run from the bus stop carrying her shoes, and now stood on the wet concrete counting the moorings, as though numbers might still put the afternoon in order.

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Her brother Tom had painted the clock on the chandlery door the summer before the war, three hands fixed at the marks he liked best: eight for the morning they left, four for the afternoon the tide came in too fast, and twelve, the hour the boat was meant to be home. He used to say a clock only needed three marks to tell a person when to stop waiting.

Edna from the chandlery found her sitting on a coil of rope with the tide book open on her knee. She didn't ask. She handed over a flask of stewed tea and said the Hallam boat had been sold in March, and the new owner had kept the name because it was bad luck to change it. Marjorie stared at the page until the pencilled tide times blurred into smudges.

At twelve minutes past four the new light on the point blinked on across the bay, slow and white, and Marjorie finally stood up. She left the tide book on the bench where Edna could find it, open at the day Tom had written his own hour down in capitals, then walked up the hill without looking back at the water.