Black and grey fine line tattoo of a sun and crescent moon above a hanging chain of dots and stars on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sun, moon and star chain on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A sunburst with a crescent moon sits at the top of the wrist, with dotted strands and small star shapes hanging down the forearm. A second crescent moon, decorated with stars and dots, sits at the lower end of the chain. The linework is fine and stippled, with shading in the sun rays, and the design is shown in black ink on a pale hand against a wooden desk.

Fine line Dotwork Forearm Sun Moon Crescent moon Star Sunburst Dotted chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marnie,

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The light came in at ten to six this morning, grey and sideways through the blinds of Bay Four, the way it always does when I've been on nights too long. I handed the drugs trolley to Bronwen with the keys still warm from my pocket and walked out past the lifts with my badge swinging like a pendulum. You would have laughed. I looked like a woman who had been awake since the Tuesday.

Mr Okafor in bed nine asked for the moon at about three. I told him the only moon on this ward was the one printed on the discharge board, and he could have that if he wanted it. He didn't laugh, but he did ask me to open the curtain. I drew it back, and there it was over the car park, sliced thin as a fingernail and balanced on the roof of the multistorey as if someone had left it there for us. Above it the stars hung in a loose line, each one a dot on a dressmaker's pattern. He counted them out loud, all eleven, and got to eleven every time, which seemed to settle him.

He was asleep by four. I sat at the desk with the ward phone off the hook and wrote his observations in the wrong columns twice before I got them right, and I thought about the summer you drew that chain on a paper napkin at Mum's table and said the sun should always sit above the moon, because that was the only order that made sense to you.

Swap me a day shift on Thursday and I'll swap you the nights back. Post me a postcard of anything with a sun on it. I'll pin it above the sink, where the blind never quite closes.

Love, Jo