Black and grey photograph of a fine line tattoo of a teardrop shape with radiating lines ending in small circles, on the inner wrist.

Teardrop burst tattoo on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a teardrop or flame-like outline sits on the inner wrist, with thin radiating lines extending outwards and finishing in tiny open circles. The linework is fine and even, in black ink with no shading, and the outline is left unfilled. The photograph is black and white against a dark background, with the tattoo centred on the lower part of the wrist.

Fine line Forearm Teardrop Flame Line Circle Dot

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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

You are fourteen the winter the sacristan gives you the sanctuary lamp at the Lady Chapel, the one that has not gone out since the fen flooded in your grandmother's time. Your hands shake as you reach for the wick, because you were told it must be trimmed with the grey shears and never with thumb and nail, and the oil in the brass bowl is so full it trembles like mercury.

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Brother Osric watches from the choir step with his ledger open on his knee. He tells you a flame is only a drop of oil that has agreed to stand up straight, and every spark that jumps from it is a small promise broken. The abbey counts them the way it counts tithes of eels. You snip too close, a hot spit leaps onto the inside of your wrist, and you bite down on your tongue rather than cry out in the silence.

That night you sit in the scriptorium with a stub of charcoal and the cold ink pots, and you draw what you saw: the bead of light standing up in its teardrop, and the sparks flung out from its shoulders in thin straight lines. At the end of each line you make a small ring, because that is where each spark went cold and stopped, still round, still trying to be a drop. There are more rings than you expected.

Osric finds the page at matins and runs his thumb across it, ready to scold you for wasting vellum. He looks at the rings for a long time. Then he takes the charcoal from your fingers, leaves the circles open at the top, and hands you the shears.