Black and grey tattoo on an upper arm showing three numbered line drawings of hands holding chopsticks.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three-step chopstick guide on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo runs down the arm in three numbered panels, each a line drawing of a hand holding a pair of chopsticks in a different position. The linework is uniform and fairly simple, in a single blue-grey ink with little or no shading. The arm sits against a dark sleeve at the top, with a supermarket shelf and a shopping trolley blurred in the background.

Upper arm Hand Number

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

It is twenty past four and the flour has worked its way into the creases of your knuckles again. The ovens tick as they heat, and the only light in the back room is the strip above the bench. You glance at your left forearm, where three blue-grey panels run down from elbow to wrist, the drawings your cousin Mei sketched for you the week you started at the Halliwell Road bakery. Step one, the sticks rest in the palm. Step two, the thumb takes the top one. Step three, the bottom stick stays still while the top one does all the moving.

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Nobody here knows you carry chopsticks in your apron pocket, tucked under the pencil. Gerald thinks it is an affectation. Tonight the first batch of cinnamon knots has to come out of the bottom oven before the shutter goes up at six, and the long tongs have vanished again, as they always do on the nights you need them.

You pinch the tray edge the way the drawing says, and the first knot lifts, wobbling. The second slips and you swear softly at the flour. By the third tray your shoulders have dropped and the rhythm arrives, the top stick rising and falling against the bottom one like a metronome set to slow.

At quarter to six the window goes grey over the car park. You set the last tray on the rack, still steaming, and fold the sticks back into your pocket. Mei sends a message asking whether it worked. You type one word back. Yes. Then you go to unlock the shutter, but for once you leave the lights off a moment longer, watching the bread cool.