Black and grey photograph of a tiny fine line paper aeroplane tattoo on the inner wrist, with the hand resting on a dark chair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small paper aeroplane on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline drawing of a folded paper aeroplane sits on the inner wrist of a pale arm, with the hand resting in the lower part of the frame. The linework is thin and even, with simple triangular facets and no shading. The image is black and grey, set against a wooden floor and a dark chair, and the tattoo is placed centrally in the upper half of the photograph.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Paper plane Outline Wrist

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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 ferry has not come since Tuesday, and the gulls have taken over the jetty. You sit on an upturned crate outside the shop with a sheet of squared paper from the post office drawer, the one that has been there since your mother's time, and you fold it along the creases you know by heart. Wings out, nose tucked, the long fold down the spine. Mrs Calder watches from the window and says nothing about the price of bread.

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Every child on Inish Maol learns to make one before they learn to swim. The old ones claim a plane launched from the headland will reach the mainland by morning if the wind is from the west. You never believed it. But last winter Tomas Greer's boat went out past the skerries and did not come back, and you have been folding ever since, one plane a night, each one carrying a line you cannot quite finish writing.

Tonight the wind is westerly. You walk the cliff path with the stack under your arm, its pages soft from handling. The sea below is the colour of pewter, and the light on the mainland is a thin yellow thread. You write on the wing in pencil, Still here, and then you let go.

It dips, catches the air, turns once over the rocks and slides out of sight. You wait for the thud on the stones, and it does not come. Far beyond the skerries a light blinks twice. Mrs Calder would call that a coincidence, but you choose to call it an answer.