Fine line tattoo of an oil lamp with a curved spout and handle on the inside of an ankle, with light grey shading at the base.

Small oil lamp on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small outlined oil lamp with a curved spout, a loop handle and a raised lid sits on the inside of an ankle. The linework is thin and dark, with grey shading along the base and a faint reddish tone at the spout. The lamp is centred on the ankle against a plain skin background, with a mint trouser leg and a black sparkly shoe visible in the frame.

Fine line Ankle Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lost property cupboard on the ground floor of Halewood House smells of wet umbrellas and paraffin, and on the Tuesday the lift breaks down for the fourth time you find the lamp wedged behind a box of Christmas tinsel. It is brass gone the colour of weak tea, with a loop handle and a lid that lifts like a hat brim. Mrs Okafor from flat nine swears it belonged to her late father, though she has never once asked for it back.

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You carry it up fourteen floors because there is nobody else to carry it. On the landing you rub the spout with your sleeve, out of habit more than hope, and a thread of smoke rises, grey and sweet, and the bulb above the stairwell flickers on for the first time in a month. Nothing else happens. You are too tired to be disappointed, so you put the lamp on the windowsill of the laundry room and go home.

It keeps turning up after that: on the bench by the bins, beside the bicycle shed, once on the bonnet of your car in the rain. Each time you bring it back up, and each time the flame at the spout stands a little taller. Mr Haddad from flat three stops hammering on the boiler at midnight. The Kowalski twins finally agree on who gets the bike on Saturdays.

On the last evening of the month you take it up to the roof and set it on the parapet. The flame holds steady in the wind. Below, the estate lights come on one window at a time, as if each household has been waiting for a signal, and you leave the lamp burning and go down the stairs one flight at a time, counting the lit windows as you pass them.