Black and white photo of two forearms with fine line script lettering, a triangle outline and small motifs, holding a metal skull.

Script lettering and fine line forearms holding a skull

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms with fine line tattoos hold a glossy metal skull against a plain white background. The tattoos include handwritten script phrases, a thin outlined triangle, a small outlined bird shape near the top and a few small marks. The image is in black and white, so the ink appears as black linework with no colour.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Triangle Skull Bird Hand Quote

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The skull came up in the silt below the old ferry pier, still wrapped in the wire basket a diver had used to haul it. Mags at the salvage yard swore it was chrome and not steel, which meant someone once cared how it looked. Nobody polishes chrome now, so I carried it home in a sack and set it on my bench under the window, where the light off the estuary could find it.

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The scratches were the first thing I learned to read. A triangle sat on the crown, pointing down toward the nasal gap, and beside it a bird no bigger than a thumbnail, its wings drawn in three quick lines. Inside the left eye socket someone had cut words in a looping hand, so small I needed the lamp and a glass: to create is to destroy. Along the lower jaw, fainter, ran naked if I want to, and under that a single word worn almost smooth.

Ines from the press across the lane came over with her tea and her opinions. She said the lines were an argument, that whoever owned the skull had been losing it and winning it back in the same breath. I told her the bird was what bothered me, because a bird is the one thing on a skull that is trying to leave. We spent the evening with rottenstone and a rag, working the chrome until the scratches turned from ugly grooves into silver gaps the light poured through.

By morning the bird had come up clearest of all, its wings two bright slices against the dark bone. I did not polish out the triangle, and I did not finish the word on the jaw, which was not mine to read. I set the skull on the sill facing the water, scratches turned outward, so that anyone walking the pier at dusk would see what had been cut into it and how much light had got in.