Black fine line tattoo of a to do list with the heading To Do and rows of checkboxes and lines on a forearm.

To do list tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm carrying a tattoo styled as a to do list, with the words To Do in a small italic script above two columns of square checkboxes, each followed by a horizontal rule. The linework is thin, even black ink with no shading, and the skin tone is pale with freckles visible around the design. The composition is straight on and centred on the arm against a blue background.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Line Text

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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

The list was still on the back of the pantry door when I got back from the sale, held up by a curl of Sellotape gone brown at the edges. Ten lines in two columns, his capitals leaning forward as if they were late for something. Ring vet re heifer. Mend gate by top field. Grease the baler. Every box was empty. He never ticked anything until it was done, and he always got it done, which is why nobody on the farm thought to ask what the boxes were for.

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February came in sideways that year. Frost lay on the yard so thick the dog refused to cross it without a sulk. I worked the lambing sheds with Mrs Pryce from the next farm, who knew where everything was and had never needed a list. I kept my own on the back of a feed receipt, folded into my coat pocket with a stub of pencil. Each evening I stood in the kitchen with the pantry door open and read his list again, the way you reread a letter whose news you already know.

Last Tuesday I walked up to the top field with a hammer, a box of nails and the torch clamped in my teeth. The gate was sagging exactly where he had said it would. I rehung it in the dark, my breath standing in front of me, and when the latch finally dropped into place I came back down the hill without hurrying.

In the kitchen I pressed the pencil into the first square until the lead squeaked. The tick came out crooked, nothing like the clean strokes he used to make. I left the other nine boxes empty and hung the paper back on its nail, because some of it, I decided, he would have wanted left for me to find.