Two small solid black semicolon tattoos on a forearm near the wrist, with a black watch and a braided bracelet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two semicolon tattoos on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black semicolon tattoos sit along the forearm, one small and one larger, both with smooth, filled shapes and clean edges. The forearm is shown from a close angle with the wrist, a black metal watch and a braided cord bracelet visible, and the hand rests on denim-clad knee. The palette is limited to black ink against skin tones, with a soft translucent covering over part of the forearm.

Forearm Semicolon Punctuation Wrist

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at Hexley Junction had ever reported losing a semicolon, so when the 6.14 to Carlisle brought in a secondhand paperback with a folded slip tucked at page 112, I had to check the staff dictionary before I knew what to call it. Two marks, drawn in biro on the back of a ticket: one small and round, one larger with its tail hooked under. Someone had written beside them, in small capitals, DON'T CLOSE IT YET.

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I logged it under Miscellaneous, between a single glove and a child's wellington, and told myself that was the end of it. Lost property is mostly a business of other people's sentences cut short. Umbrellas get left on trains by people in a hurry to be somewhere they have decided is better. Nobody comes back for the things that matter, which is why I was surprised when a man in a grey coat came to the hatch on Tuesday and asked, very politely, whether anyone had handed in a book.

He knew the title. He didn't know the page. When I passed him the paperback he turned it over twice, found the ticket, and laughed under his breath, the way you laugh at a joke you have been telling yourself for years. "She always put them in the middle," he said. "Said a full stop was just a semicolon that had given up."

I kept the ticket after he left. It still sits in my drawer with the two marks facing up, the small one first. Nobody has come back for the book. I think I like it better that way.