Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Spiral symbol tattoo on a wrist

Blackwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo of two interlocking spirals inside a curved outline with pointed tails sits on the wrist. The linework is bold and filled, with smooth curves and no shading or colour. The photograph is taken straight on against a dark background with a desk and keyboard partly visible.

Blackwork Other Spiral Symbol Outline Wrist

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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

Dear Thaïs, the harbour master has finally paid me, though he paid in copper that smells of his cousin's fish sauce, so do not let Mother sell the good cloth on my account. You asked why I have not written since the flood month. It is because I have been drawing the same crab for eleven days.

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The commission came from a Greek shipwright who wanted the sign of the Crab cut into the bronze cap of his new mast: two spirals curling inward like the coils of a wave, with tails that trail off like the last of a retreating tide. I drew it fourteen times on wax. Each time the spirals came out too tight, and the shipwright said they looked like a snail that had been sat upon. On the twelfth night I walked down to the shingle below the lighthouse to clear my head, and there was one, a real one, grey and wet, turning in slow circles where the water had left it.

I watched it for an hour. Its shell was not a spiral at all, but the legs folded in the same curl, and the eyes sat at the top of the stalk like the knots of a drawn line. I traced its shape in the sand with a stick. The tide came back and I had to run. The next morning the sand held only the tails, the spirals washed away, so I drew what I remembered and sent it to the shipwright.

He cut it into the mast without a word. Now the sign sits above the sea every morning, and I walk past it to the harbour office to be paid in copper. Keep this letter, Thaïs. When you next see the sign, remember that a crab taught me its shape, and do not let anyone tell you it was the stars.