Black blackwork tattoo of stacked geometric triangles and arrowheads running down the inside of a forearm, in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stacked geometric triangles on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo of stacked triangles and arrowhead shapes, some outlined and some filled, runs vertically down the forearm toward the wrist. The bold, hard-edged linework and dense black fills sit against smooth skin, with the arm held out in front of a person standing on a wooden floor. The photograph is in black and white, so the ink contrast is strong and the shapes read clearly.

Blackwork Geometric Forearm Triangle Arrow Geometric shape Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had counted the marks on the wall of Tanners Lane every night since the lamps went out in the east end, and every night there were fewer of them. Down-pointing triangles, chalked by the water board's men in the years before the river was roofed over, one above the other, each smaller than the last like a row of teeth closing. The board said they were drain levels. Her grandmother said they were a way down for anyone who had lost something in the water.

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On the night the bell of St Oswin's went missing, Nell took a stub of chalk and a dark lantern and followed the marks past the coal cellar, past the shut tea room where the cat slept on the sugar sacks, to the iron grate at the foot of the lane. The arrows ran on under the cobbles in her head, all pointing where the river had gone. She counted eleven steps down the cold stair before the lantern showed her the water, black and very still, with a bell rope lying across it like a drowned snake.

She could hear the bell under the surface, a dull note each time the current nudged it. She knelt and reached for the rope, and the last mark on the wall above her, the smallest one, was no bigger than a thumbprint. Her grandmother had told her the chalkers only made the last triangle when they were finished with a thing. Nell looked at it for a long time. Then she tied the rope to the grate, put the chalk back in her pocket, and climbed the eleven steps without once looking down at the water.