Black fine line tattoo of scissors with thin swirling flourishes on the inner wrist.

Scissors and swirls on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of black open scissors sits on the inner wrist, with the blades angled diagonally and a solid, bold outline. Fine, thin-lined swirls and curls wrap around the scissors on the left side, adding a delicate flourish. The tattoo is in black ink only, shown against pale skin with the wrist filling the centre of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Scissors Swirl Flourish Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The shears were still warm from Morag's fist when she pressed them into yours on the quay at Inish Dhu, the ferry already sounding for the last crossing. You had until the tide turned to finish the Hallam flock, forty-odd ewes penned in the lee of the old kiln, and in six summers you had never clipped a sheep without her at your elbow saying tuck it in, lass, don't chase the wool.

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So you tucked. The blades opened and closed with a sound like a gull lifting off the rocks, and the fleece came away in one heavy piece, curling at the edges the way a letter curls when it has been read too often. Morag used to say a good clip was a fleece you could fold like a bedsheet, and the ewes stood patient for it, steaming in the wind off the Atlantic, while the light went long and gold across the water.

The last ewe was the old grey one with the torn ear, and she kicked hard enough to nearly take your shin off. You caught her, held her, and when her coat peeled away the wool dropped in a single loose spiral that rolled across the flagstones and stopped against your boot as if it had been waiting for you to notice. Out past the breakwater the ferry's horn sounded a second time, then gave up.

You hung the shears on the nail by the kiln door, where Morag had always hung them, and tied a strand of red wool through the rivet so the next keeper would know whose they had been, and whose they were now.