Traditional style tattoo sleeve with skulls and daggers in black and red on a forearm and upper arm, with arms crossed.

Traditional tattoo sleeve on crossed arms

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A person stands with arms folded, showing a densely tattooed arm from forearm to upper arm, with the head and face cropped out of frame. The tattoos use bold black outlines and shading, with skull and dagger motifs and areas of red, orange and yellow ink. The composition is a full-length standing shot against a plain white wall and wooden floor.

Traditional Forearm Upper arm Skull Dagger

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The Bramleys came in early this year, all at once, the way they do when the wasps have been at the windfalls for a week and nobody has picked them up. Dad would have been furious. I spent Saturday on the ladder with the old folding saw and the little pruning knife with the bone handle he kept in his waistcoat, and I caught myself talking to the trees the way he used to, telling them what they were going to do.

Mrs Hollis from the lane came over with a tin of shortbread and asked whether we were selling the lower field. I said not while there is a single tree standing in it. She looked at the ladder and said nothing, which is her way of agreeing with you.

Then yesterday, under the oldest tree by the wall, I found a tin box wedged in the roots, its lid rusted into a shape like a grin. Inside was a pocket watch with the glass gone, a photograph of Dad at nineteen with a row of skulls and daggers inked across his forearm in colours that had faded to orange and yellow, and a slip of paper that said only "Keep the Ellison row. It remembers." I have no idea what that means. Maybe you do.

Come up at the weekend. Bring the good secateurs, and bring your temper, because I am not climbing that tree alone.

Love, Ruth