Black and grey realism style tattoo of two hexagonal dumbbells on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two dumbbells on an inner wrist

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hexagonal dumbbells are drawn in shaded black and grey, one overlapping the other at a slight angle. Soft gradients and cross-hatched shadows give the metal heads and handles a three-dimensional look. The tattoo sits on pale skin against a light teal paper background, shot straight on.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the pair under a tarpaulin at the far end of Coldharbour Market, where the rain runs off the canvas in ropes. The stallholder, a woman called Dot with a roll-up tucked behind one ear, says they came out of a closed gymnasium in Walsall. The hexagonal heads were cast flat so they wouldn't roll off a bench. You pick one up. It is heavier than it looks, and the handle is worn smooth where other hands have been.

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She wants eight pounds for the two. You offer five. The rain drums harder on the awnings, and a boy runs past with a bread bag over his head, sliding on the wet cobbles. Dot says the weights belonged to a man who lifted them every morning before his shift at the bottling plant. When he moved to his daughter's in Shrewsbury he left them in her lock-up, and she never had the heart to sell them until the lock-up was sold too. "He said he'd get stronger without them," she says, "and I suppose he did."

You pay the eight pounds. Carrying them back through the market, one in each hand, you picture them on the shelf above your sink, and how you'd dust them every Sunday. At the gate you stop under the chip shop awning and set them down side by side, one a little ahead of the other, the way they sat on her stall.

You haven't lifted them yet. For now they sit on the windowsill, catching the grey light, and every time it rains you think of the man in Shrewsbury, and wonder whether he misses the weight of them or has simply learned to carry something else.

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