Fine line black tattoo of outlined triangles and Roman numeral style strokes running across a forearm.

Triangles and Roman numerals on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of thin black outlined triangles alternates with vertical strokes and V shapes, reading like Roman numerals, across the forearm. The linework is clean and even, in solid black ink with no shading, and the tattoo sits horizontally across the centre of the arm. The skin is light with a faint bruise-like mark above the tattoo, and the background shows a grey sofa.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Triangle Roman numeral Geometric shape Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fourth train was late again, so Edith Wren chalked the board before she let herself sit down. The rulebook said a box kept its count whether the trains came or not. She drew the first triangle with its point turned down, the way the old men did when a road was blocked, then VII for the wagons she could make out through the glass, then the open triangle for the goods loop, which had been shut since April.

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Tobias came up the iron stairs at half past with the relief log under his arm and his cap pushed back. He read the board with his lips moving. "Why's VIII in there twice?" "One for the bridge and one for the cutting," she said. "The men who laid the line in 1888 couldn't agree which mattered more, so they wrote both and let the timetable sort it out." He laughed, then stopped, because the last three strokes at the end of the row were not hers. They were Harold Pell's, from the winter the night mail went through with nobody on the platform to wave it on.

She had never added a stroke to that row. She had only ever kept it. Tonight she counted the strokes again, slowly, the way Harold must have done, and found that the sum was one short of what the log said, which meant one train had run through the box without ever being written down.

When Tobias had gone, Edith stood at the board with the chalk loose in her fingers. She left the last stroke unfinished, a short line trailing off towards the edge of the slate, so that whoever came up the stairs next would have something to complete.