Back view of a woman in a white lace bodysuit showing a small fine line tattoo of symbols and numerals in black ink across the mid-back.

Small line of symbols and numerals on mid-back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman seen from behind sits on a white bed, wearing a white lace bodysuit with an open back. A small black tattoo runs horizontally across the middle of her back, made up of a cross-like mark followed by numerals and symbols in thin, fine lines. The background is a dark headboard and white pillows, with soft, even lighting that keeps the skin and ink clearly visible.

Fine line Lettering Back Symbol Numeral Text Line

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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

Dear Ruth, the chart office has sent my sheet back twice this week, so I have plenty of time to think about your mother's kitchen table and the pencil marks you pressed into the oilcloth. I am writing from Skerrow, the last inhabited rock before the sea goes flat and grey all the way to Iceland. The Admiralty sent me out in April to fix the position of a sea buoy nobody has seen since the war. Three days of fog later I had a sounding line, a theodolite with a cracked lens, and a harbour boy called Tam who whistles when he is nervous.

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On the fourth morning the mist lifted and I took my last sight from the north headland. The bearing came out at thirty-four degrees, fifty-six minutes and thirty-seven seconds north, with a little over twelve minutes of longitude west of the Greenwich line. I wrote it on the back of my hand because the notebook had gone to pulp, then copied it onto the chart in ink. Tam leaned over my shoulder and asked what it marked. I told him it was the place where Donal Halloran rowed out to see his brother's boat off and never rowed back.

The buoy was not there. Instead, two fathoms down, the lads with the grapnel brought up a brass cask with a cork seal, and inside it a folded card in a hand I did not know, addressed only to whoever found it. It was not a confession, only a list of soundings and a line that said the tide will tell you what the sea will not. I have not decided yet whether to send it to the Admiralty.

I am keeping the fix to myself for now. You once asked me where the edge of the map was. It is here, a pencil cross on oilcloth, and I am taking Thursday's boat home so you can see it for yourself.