Black and grey geometric tattoo of nested angular lines in a square block on the outer upper arm, shown in a black and white photograph.

Square geometric motif on upper arm

Geometric · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A square block of nested angular lines forms a symmetrical geometric motif resembling a maze or interlocking key pattern. The lines are thin, outlined and filled with solid black ink, with no shading. The photograph is black and white against a dark background, with the tattoo centred on the outer upper arm.

Geometric Upper arm Geometric pattern Square Symmetry

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Kestrel House has been broken since March, so you take the stairs with a carrier bag of shopping and count the landings out loud. Eleven floors, four flats a landing, and walkway doors that open onto the same grey corridor no matter which way you turn. Mrs Okafor on the seventh says the architect drew it that way to keep the wind out. Her husband says he drew it to keep the council out. Nobody in the block has ever seen the original plans.

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Your nephew Danny is nine and has decided the building is a maze with a prize at the centre. He draws it for you on the back of a takeaway menu: a square of nested lines, each corridor folding back into the next, with a gap near the top where the rubbish chute must be. Go in through the middle, he says, and the door sticks, so you have to go round the outside three times and knock. You tell him that is not how doors work. He tells you that is exactly how doors work in Kestrel House.

On the night the lift finally comes back, you are the one who rides it first, and the doors open on the ground floor to find Danny already waiting, the menu folded in his fist. He has traced a route in biro along every stairwell. You follow it up the way he showed you, landing by landing, past Mrs Okafor's cat and the smell of somebody's curry, until the last corridor opens onto the roof.

From up here the estate lies below like a drawing on squared paper, and the maze finally makes sense. At its heart is a square of tarmac with one lamp and a row of wheelie bins. Danny says that is where the prize is kept. You don't tell him it's the bin store. You hold the menu up against the view and let him trace the way out.