Black and grey outline tattoo on the forearm showing two hatched anatomical hearts above the word WHO in block letters, with an open rectangle shape at the top.

Two anatomical hearts with WHO lettering

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two anatomical hearts drawn with fine hatched shading, set side by side above the outlined block letters WHO. A simple open rectangle sits above the hearts at the top of the design. The piece is rendered in black linework and grey shading against pale skin, and the design is centred in the frame.

Traditional Forearm Heart Anatomical heart Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamplighter of Saltmarrow walked the quays after the last bell, and he carried one question in his coat pocket the way other men carried matches. He asked it of everyone whose lamp he lit. Who do you keep? A fishwife said her husband, who was out past the breakwater in weather she did not like. A clockmaker said his sister, dead these nine winters, and the lamplighter lit the clockmaker's window lantern twice so she would not walk home in the dark. A boy said nobody, so the lamplighter sat down on the wet kerb beside him until the boy admitted to a grey cat called Tuesday.

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On the night the fog came off the water thick as wool, a stranger stood under the last lamp by the customs house. They held two red hearts in their open palms, the way a man holds lanterns he is not ready to set down. The stranger asked the question back, and the lamplighter found his mouth had nothing ready. He had only ever asked. The lamps along the quay went out one at a time as the fog climbed the steps, and the stranger waited with the patience of someone who had waited in worse places.

He understood then that the answer was not a name at all. It was the upright space above the hearts, the one he had always thought was a mistake in the drawing, the gap a person leaves open for whoever is still coming. He left it empty and struck his flint. The light caught the fog and the stranger was gone, though the hearts stayed printed on the wet stones for the tide to read.

In the morning the quay was full of people carrying the same question in their pockets, and none of them had an answer yet.