Black and white photo of a small fine line arrow tattoo on the upper back, with the arrowhead pointing right.

Small arrow tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small arrow tattoo runs horizontally across the upper back, with a feathered fletching at the left end and a pointed arrowhead at the right. The linework is thin and the ink is solid black with no shading. The photograph is black and white and dimly lit, with the tattoo placed centrally against pale skin and a hand with a ring visible at the right edge.

Fine line Back Arrow

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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 arrow leaves the balcony rail at Ashcombe House before you have finished deciding whether to let it go. It is the last of the six your uncle Dev cut from ash shafts, and it clears the car park, the bins and the hedge of the sheltered flats, then drops into the grass beside the bus stop as neatly as if someone had posted it.

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Nobody on the eleventh floor believes you about the aim. Mrs Okafor from number 44 says a thing that flies that far has no business being a child's toy, and your mum says nothing at all, which is worse. Dev only laughs and asks you to walk him down the stairs, because the lift has been broken since March and his knee has opinions about stairs.

At the bottom the arrow is gone. A boy on a bike is holding it up like a caught fish, fletching bent, shouting that it is his now. You stand with your hands in your pockets and feel the old pull to argue. Dev taps your shoulder with his cane and says the bow was never the point. The point is to let it go where it wants, then go and fetch it.

So you let the boy keep it. The next morning, wedged in the ground floor lift doors where someone has propped them open with a crisp packet, you find the spare shaft Dev hid in the stairwell for you, fletched fresh in blue. You carry it up eleven floors without stopping once.