Black geometric bands with rune lettering wrap a forearm, while another person's hands hold the arm and a faint blue guideline marks the wrist.

Rune and geometric band forearm tattoo

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is wrapped in several bold black bands filled with rune-like symbols and angular zigzag and chevron patterns. The linework is solid black with some fine detail inside the bands, and the skin tone is the only colour in the image. Two hands hold the arm against a pale grey cloth background, with a faint blue guideline visible near the wrist.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Rune Band Zigzag Chevron Geometric pattern Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The 6.12 was late again, so I have been sitting on the bench under the clock with your grandfather's pattern book open on my knee. You will laugh, but the bands are all here. Forty years I thought the zigzags were just Dad's doodles in the margins of the lamp-room log, and this morning I finally counted them. Each chevron is a points setting. Each rune stands in for a platform number he never bothered to write out in full.

Mr Okafor from the goods yard came over with his tea and asked what I was reading. I said it was a map of a country that stopped running trains in 1963. He didn't argue. He sat down beside me and read the bands aloud, slowly, the way you'd read a hymn, and by the third band he had the signal sequence for the Ashworth branch worked out in his head.

I am not sure what you'll make of it. The company wants the lamp room cleared by Friday, and the book is going in the skip with the broken lanterns unless you say otherwise. So here is my say. Keep it. Take it to whatever city you're in and show someone who reads for a living. Tell them about the blue guideline on the last page. He always drew the line first and fitted the pattern inside it, as if the thing had to be made to leave room for the living part.

The 6.12 has just whistled. Come home before Christmas if you can.

Love, Dad