Black ink fine line tattoo of a to do list with a heading, checkboxes and ruled lines across the inside of a forearm.

To do list tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the heading "To Do:" in small script above two columns of square checkboxes, each beside a horizontal ruled line. The linework is thin, even and black, with no shading, set on pale skin. The design fills the inner forearm and the photo is taken straight on against a blue and grey background.

Fine line Forearm Script

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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 is pinned inside the lamp room door, in Ada's square capitals, because your own hand shakes too much to write in the cold. TO DO, it says at the top, underlined twice, as if she expected you to need reminding. Ten boxes down the left, ten down the right, and not one of them ticked since the supply boat turned its back on Gannet Rock on Tuesday.

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The work does not care that the mainland has forgotten you. Each morning you climb the hundred and twelve steps with a tin of paraffin and a rag, and each morning the wick wants trimming the same as ever. You trim it. You wind the clockwork weights that drive the great lens, one turn for every hour the gulls have been screaming at the glass. You polish the brass until your reflection in it is grey and far away. Ticking boxes with a stub of pencil is the only ceremony the rock permits.

By the eighth day the list has become a kind of conversation. Lens, both sides, Ada wrote, and you laugh at her for thinking you would neglect one side. Log the tide. The tide has been logged. Then, on the ninth morning, a red flare hisses up from the shingle at Harrow Point, and you understand the boats have not forgotten after all. They were only waiting for the weather to lie down.

You stand at the window with the pencil still in your fist. Then you turn back to the door, find the last empty box at the foot of the right-hand column, and tick it, though the ruled line beside it is still blank and the lamp is already turning.