Black and grey tattoo of the sun and a row of planets, including Saturn with its rings, with scattered stars running along a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Solar system tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm carries a row of tattooed planets running from the wrist towards the elbow, starting with a partial sun at the wrist. Saturn with its ring and Jupiter with its banded surface are among the larger bodies, drawn with fine outlines and soft shading. Small dots and stars fill the gaps between the planets, and the image is a close, evenly lit view against a plain background.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Sun Planet Saturn Star Solar system

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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You will never guess what Gordon said on Saturday. We were under the mirror ball at the Palais, the one with the cracked tile by the cloakroom, and he stopped dead in the middle of a foxtrot and pointed up at the little lights spinning over us. He said the sun was the only thing in the room that never moved, and everything else just went round it, the same as us going round the bandstand. I told him that was the daftest thing I had heard all year. He said I was the only one he would tell.

So you know why I have been hiding my wrist under my cardigan. Walter from the waltzers did it for me in the back of his caravan, with a sewing needle and a bottle of Indian ink he swore was the good sort. The sun sits at my wrist, half of it on the edge of my skin like it is rising. Out towards the elbow come the planets in proper order, small ones first, then Jupiter with his bands, then Saturn with his ring tilted just so, and the dots and stars he wedged in between like sequins Walter had spilled. Mum nearly fainted. Gordon asked if I was going to let him read it or only look.

I have stopped hiding it since. Last night the band struck up Moonlight Serenade and I lifted my arm up into the lights before I could think better of it. The planets caught the glow, and the sun at my wrist seemed to tug the whole row after it, round and round, like something that knew exactly where it was going. Gordon was watching the arm, not the dancers. I think he is going to be trouble.

Write soon and tell me about the new job, and whether they have finally fixed that draught by the ticket office.

Love, Edie