A small black vertical line tattoo on the inner forearm of a person wearing a denim jacket and a turquoise ring.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small vertical line tattoo on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person in a denim jacket and white top holds up a hand wearing a turquoise ring, with sunglasses hanging from the jacket. A small, thin black vertical line tattoo sits on the inner forearm, shown in sharp focus against the skin. The image is in black ink only, with a warm, slightly faded colour grade across the whole photograph.

Forearm Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gauge board at Sallow Lock had been limewashed so many times that the old marks showed through like ribs. Mercy Tollard pressed the steel rule against the damp plaster and drew the morning's stroke, one straight line from the sill up to the first notch, the way her mother had taught her with a plumb cord and a lump of lead.

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Each line recorded how high the river stood. Ansel came down the towpath that Tuesday with two men from the Drainage Board and a paint tin under his arm. "They want the wall clear by Friday," he said. "The new sluice has its own gauge, digital, you can read it from the car." Mercy didn't argue. She counted the strokes aloud instead, three hundred and twelve of them, down to the winter the water had crept over the sill and stayed a fortnight.

She held out the rule. Ansel stood a long time with it, then set his thumb against the plaster below the last mark and drew one more, slower than she would have, the line dipping a hair where his hand shook. "Level," he said, squinting. "Tell me that's level." It was the first stroke in thirty-one years that matched the water exactly.

Mercy took the paint tin back off him and set it on the sill. Friday came and went, and the tin stayed shut.