Black and white photo of a small fine line wave tattoo on the inner wrist of a raised hand.

Small wave tattoo on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raised hand with fingers loosely curled shows a single small tattoo of a curling wave on the inner wrist. The tattoo is drawn in thin, even black linework with no shading. The photograph is in black and white, with the hand set against a plain light background.

Fine line Forearm Wave

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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

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the lamp, it's the last of the good oil. No, Tamsin, the sea is not behind the dunes. I told you that yesterday and the day before. Now listen. Our grandmothers' grandmothers said the water rose up grey and curled over on itself, the way a hand closes around something it means to keep.

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Old Ysolde Marr walked the drowned coast with a tin of ink and a bone needle, marking the bows of fishing boats and the inside of anyone's wrist who asked her to. Each mark was a single curl, drawn in one pass and never lifted, because a wave that stops halfway is only a rumour. She asked for no coin. She asked for one true thing about the sea in return, and she wrote every answer in a ledger that is now lost to the damp.

The last person she marked was a girl called Oona, who could not swim and said so plainly. Why mark a thing you fear, Oona asked. Ysolde said fear was the very reason. That winter the spring tide took the harbour wall and most of the village with it, and Oona was carried off to the high ground with nothing but her shawl. When the water finally drew back, she went down to the shingle and held out her arm to the grey light. The curl was still there, sharp and unsmudged, the only mark on that whole shore that had not been moved by the tide.

So turn your hand over, Tamsin. Go on. Now you know where the sea keeps its shape.