Two black ink designs on the inner forearms: a decorated sugar skull with flowers on the left arm and a dreamcatcher with feathers on the right arm, against a stars and stripes background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sugar skull and dreamcatcher on forearms

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown side by side. On the left, a sugar skull with floral patterns on the head, a heart on the forehead and a dotted and flower motif below the jaw. On the right, a dreamcatcher with a beaded ring, a radiating web and two feathers hanging from the base. The designs use black linework and solid fills on pale skin, with a blue and white star pattern fabric behind.

Forearm Sugar skull Skull Dreamcatcher Feather Flower Dot Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The skull was never meant to share a trestle with the hoops. Marisol had pinned her paper marigolds to the awning before six, and by eight Dev had strung his beaded rings along the rail, and the two of them had agreed over a flask of stewed tea that Kirkgate market was big enough for both of them. The customers disagreed. A woman in a green raincoat picked up the skull, turned it over, and asked whether it was for luck or for warding things off. Dev said the hoop caught bad dreams and let the good ones through. Marisol said the skull was for remembering the people who had gone, and that remembering was a kind of luck. The woman bought both, and then came back for a second hoop for her sister.

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By noon the sky had turned the colour of wet slate, and the wind came up the lane like it owned it. The awning lifted, folded, and dumped a bucket of rainwater onto the trestle. Dev lunged for the rings. Marisol grabbed the skull and the marigolds before they could blow into the road. When the gust passed, a scrap of orange paper had snagged in the web of the largest hoop, and two loose feathers had tangled in the flowers painted under the skull's jaw. They stood there soaked, looking at the mess, and started laughing so hard that a passing bus driver tooted at them.

They packed up at four. Dev counted the takings on an upturned crate while Marisol wrapped the skull in newspaper, and neither of them mentioned the morning argument. The hoop lay across the crate with the orange marigold still caught in its web, bright as a coin in the dusk. Dev unhooked the paper carefully, folded it into a neat square, and slid it into the pocket of Marisol's coat.

He split the till into thirds, not halves, and she let him, because the third that belonged to the skull was the one she had painted by lamplight every night that week.