Black and grey fine line tattoo of the solar system with a sun face and planets on dashed orbits, running down a forearm.

Solar system with a sun face on the forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A sun with a human-like face sits at the centre of several dashed orbit lines, with planets including a banded gas giant and a ringed Saturn placed along the arm. The linework is fine and precise, with stippled dots forming asteroid-like bands between the orbits and light shading on the planets. The image is black and white, with the arm shown against a dark background and a grey top and jeans in the frame.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Solar system Sun Planet Saturn Orbit Dashed line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Carrow House has been dead since Easter, so you climb. By the ninth floor the stairwell smells of bleach and somebody's Sunday chips, and you start counting the planets the way Gran taught you, one per landing, pressing your palm to the cold rail at each one as if it might tell you something. Mercury is a scuffed patch by the fire door. Venus is the noticeboard with its curling notice about bins. Earth is wherever you're standing when you run out of breath.

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Gran drew the whole thing on the backs of gas bills. Orbits in biro, dashed, because she said solid lines were for roads and she'd had enough of those. The sun sat in the middle with a face, a proper grinning one with rays like a dandelion clock, and she told you he was the only one in the sky who never had to go to work. Jupiter got bands. Saturn got a ring she went over so many times the paper tore. Between Mars and Jupiter she stippled dots with the tip of the pen, a belt of rubbish, she called it, the bits that never got to be anything.

When the home rang to say she'd stopped being able to find the kettle, you carried the bills down in a Co-op bag, forty-odd of them, and didn't open any until the bus. Most were only numbers. The last one had Saturn on it, still wearing its ring, and under the sun she'd written in capitals: HE IS NOT CROSS WITH ANYONE, LOVE.

Tonight you tape that sheet to the wall on the eleventh floor, under the landing light that buzzes as if it's thinking about it. Then you step back and find your own orbit, the one that runs up and down these stairs, and for once the dashes seem to fit.