Fine line black tattoos of a star, ringed planet, arrow, crescent moon, crystal and beetle scattered along a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small celestial tattoos on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm with dark nail polish is shown against a dark background, with a scatter of small single-needle style motifs in black ink. The motifs include a star, a ringed planet, an arrow, a crescent moon, a crystal, a beetle and a dotted constellation-like line running down towards the wrist. The linework is thin and even, with no shading or colour, and the designs are spaced loosely across the arm.

Fine line Forearm Star Planet Arrow Moon Crystal Beetle Constellation Snowflake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The lift is out again, so I've been counting stairs instead. Fourteen floors, and Mr Adeyemi on the ninth keeps a tally in chalk on the wall, which I've been adding to on my way up. Tell Dad the pigeons have taken the window ledge on the eleventh, and that the man from the council came round with a clipboard, looked at the damp patch, and went away without once looking up.

You asked about the sky. From the roof you can see the whole grid of the estate, the car park lamps, and above them, if you stand by the water tank and wait for the bus to stop coughing, the actual sky. Last Thursday I brought up the old atlas and we matched the dots on its pages to the dots overhead. Dad always called it our stellar tally. I got the Plough first go, and Mr Adeyemi swore there was a planet in the corner that moved, which there was, slow as a thumb.

I went looking for the beetle Gran kept in her sewing tin, the one with the blue-black back. I found it in the bin behind the lift, cracked open, and felt daft for how much it stung. So I've done what you'd have done. I drew the things I could still remember on the back of the council letter: a star, a ringed planet, a little arrow pointing north, a crescent, a crystal, the beetle, a snowflake from the winter the snow came up to the balconies, and a line of dots running down the margin that follows the bus route.

The pen's already fading on the paper. Come up in March when the sky is clear and we'll see whether the dots still match. Bring the atlas, and the tin if you've still got it.

Love, Jo

P.S. Mr Adeyemi says the lift will be fixed by Easter, which means the summer.