Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a bone bound with rope, shown on the inner forearm of a person wearing dark clothing.

Rope-wrapped bone on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bone, shown with its rounded ends, runs vertically down the forearm and is wrapped in a coiled rope tied in a knot at its centre. The shading is built almost entirely from stippled dots, giving the bone a soft, textured surface and the rope a twisted, rounded form. The design is in black ink only and sits on a pale, slightly marked arm against a grey brick background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The thaw comes late to the top field, and you find the bone where the ground has slumped away from the drystone wall. It is a long one, a shin or a thigh from some beast your grandfather would have named without thinking, and its ends have gone smooth from years of weather. Someone has bound it. Three turns of old hemp are wrapped around the shaft and knotted tight at the middle, the knot gone grey and stiff with frost. You kneel in the mud and work your thumb under the rope, trying to remember whose knot this is. Your father tied everything that way, the double half-hitch he swore would hold a bull through a flood.

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You carry the bone back down the lane under your coat, because you cannot yet say why you want it. The kitchen smells of wet wool and the kettle is already on. Your mother looks at the bulge under your arm and says nothing, which is how she has always said the important things. You set the bone on the table between the teapot and the wireless. The rope drips onto the oilcloth and makes a dark, patient ring.

In the morning there is a new knot tied beside the old one, loose and careless, and a sheep's bell hanging from the end of it. You do not untie either. Outside, the sun clears the ridge and the fields steam, and the whole valley seems to be holding its breath around the single pale shape you have decided to keep.

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