Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch breaking into fragments, with clock numbers and hands, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shattering pocket watch on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with a chain bow sits on the forearm, its face showing clock numbers and hands while the glass and casing break apart into shards. Small fragments and a second, smaller dial drift outwards across the skin, and the shading gives the metal a dimensional, rendered look. The piece is done entirely in black ink and greys against a plain silver background.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Clock face Clock hand Number

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had got into the lane again by the time Dad let me take the watch out of the drawer. It was his father's, a silver pocket watch with a chain bow that never lay flat, and it had hung on the nail above the Aga for as long as I could remember, ticking louder than the wireless.

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I dropped it on the Tuesday of the big snow, carrying the feed bucket out to the top field. It struck the iron gate face first. The glass went with a sound like ice on a puddle, and a spray of little shards scattered across the white like spilt sugar. The casing split along one side. When I picked it up, the hour hand still pointed at the four, as if the face had only been waiting for an excuse to stop.

Dad didn't shout. He sat under the lamp for an evening with a jeweller's loupe pressed to his eye and said the movement was sound, only the face had given up. He showed me the small dial at the bottom, the one that counted seconds, still running smooth as breath on a cold window. 'Clocks don't break so much as shed,' he said, and went out to the barn before I could ask him what he meant.

Come March the ewes were lambing at all hours and nobody knew the time any more, not really. One morning I found the watch on the windowsill, wound, the broken glass swept into a saucer, the minute hand moving again and a little out of true. I set it by the radio pips and carried it out to the yard. The slush had gone, and a few fragments still sat in the gravel where they'd fallen, catching the light the way they had on the day they first broke.