Fine line black treble clef tattoo on the inner wrist, shown in black and white photography with stacked bands worn above it.

Treble clef on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small treble clef is drawn in thin, single-weight black linework on the inner wrist. The outline is smooth and even, with no shading, and the tattoo sits near the wrist crease. The black and white photo is shallow in focus, with a hand raised above and several cord bracelets and a round charm below the tattoo.

Fine line Forearm Treble clef Music Musical notation Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Hallam had the copyist's hand for it, the wrist so steady that the ink never blotted, and he would not let Ada touch a clef until she could draw one in a single breath. "Round the second line," he said, tapping the ruled stave with the nib of his pen. "The G sits there, and the rest of the tune hangs off it like washing off a line." She practised on the back of spoiled manuscript paper until her fingers ached and the curls came out lopsided, like something a cat had walked over.

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The publisher on Briggate wanted two hundred copies of a march for the colliery band by Friday. Ada worked by the gas jet after closing, pinning each sheet flat with brass weights shaped like little bells. Her wrist grew stiff, then easy, then stiff again. On the Thursday night the jet hissed out and she sat in the dark, drawing clefs on her palm with a dry finger, one loop after another, until the shape stopped being a symbol and became simply a way of turning back.

On Friday the band played the march in the square, and Ada stood at the edge with her hands in her coat. She could not read the crowd's faces, only hear the tune climb and fall where her pen had put it. When the last note dropped down to the G and rang out into the cold, a lark rose from the cobbles and went up in one clean curl, and she laughed aloud, because the bird had drawn it better than she ever could.