Black and grey fine line tattoo of planets in a row down the inner forearm, including two ringed planets and a banded planet in the middle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Solar system planets down a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of planets and small dots runs down the inside of a forearm, varying in size from smaller dots at the top to a larger banded planet in the centre. The planets are shaded with fine stippled dots and thin lines, and two of them have rings. The photograph is monochrome and shows the arm against a dark, rumpled bedsheet.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Planet Solar system Saturn Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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We are in Hexham now, or what is left of us is. The ringmaster sold the second elephant to a farm outside Carlisle, and the wagon with the painted tigers has a wheel that wobbles like a drunk man. Still, the orrery came through. I kept it wrapped in your old greatcoat across my knees the whole way from Penrith, because the lads on the lorry would have dropped it on the cobbles without a thought.

You'd laugh at me. It is only a brass arm with nine balls on wire, and half of them are chipped. But the Saturn ring is the one Father soldered himself, and when the lamp is behind it the shadow falls on the canvas exactly as it did in Doncaster in 1952. The little dots at the top are for the asteroids, he said, and nobody ever counted them, so nobody could say he had them wrong.

Last night the ticket girl came round asking whether we would still be doing the Tuesday show with the stars. I told her there were eleven people booked and a dog that could count to four. She didn't laugh. She stood under the lamp, turned the handle for me, and the planets went round in their slow line, Jupiter first, then Saturn with its tilted ring, and out past the edge where the dark begins. Neither of us said anything. The handle went stiff on the last turn, the way it always does, and we let it stop there.

Write back soon. Tell Mam I have kept the good thread.

Yours, Nell