Three tiny black dots tattooed in a diagonal line on the inner forearm, in a fine line style.

Three small dots on the inner forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bare forearm and raised fist are shown against a textured grey wall. Three small black dots sit in a diagonal line on the inner forearm, close to the wrist. The tattoo is a minimal dotwork design in solid black ink, and the soft, even lighting leaves the skin tone and the dots clearly visible.

Dotwork Fine line Forearm Dot Minimal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp is cold in your hand at ten past two, and the river below the bridge is black enough to swallow the lights of the fish market. You have been sending the same thing for an hour. Dot, dot, dot. Nobody on the quay asks what it means, because everyone on this stretch of water knows that three short flashes say the crew is still aboard and the tide is still coming.

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Your father taught you the code at the kitchen table in a terraced house in South Shields, tapping with a teaspoon while the kettle ticked. He said a lamp was only a voice that had to be patient. Tonight the Marigold is three hours late off Cullercoats, and the harbour office has stopped answering the radio. You keep the beam steady on the dark gap between the piers and count the seconds between your own breaths.

At twenty to four a single light answers from the water. It is weak and it stutters, and it sends nothing but the same three dots, short, short, short, until you can almost hear the men shouting over the engine. You lower your arm slowly. The lamp has rubbed a hot ache into your palm, and you do not care.

By dawn the gulls are back on the cranes and the Marigold is nosing into berth nine with a dented rail and a boy in a yellow oilskin waving at you. You write the entry in the log in capitals: CREW AND CATCH ACCOUNTED FOR. Underneath, because nobody ever reads the margins, you draw three small dots in pencil and sign your name.