Black and grey dotwork and blackwork tattoo of a wave and setting sun inside a circle on the forearm.

Wave and sunset in a circle on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A circular design shows a large curling wave on the left and a setting sun over the sea on the right, with a small cloud and two birds in the sky. The wave is drawn with bold, hatched linework and fine dotted shading, while the sun and clouds are built up with stippled dots. The design is entirely black and grey and sits centrally on a bare forearm against a plain white background.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Wave Sea Sunset Sun Cloud Bird Circle Ocean

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Harbour Court has been broken since Tuesday, so you climb the stairs with the shopping hooked on your fingers, past a heart someone sprayed on the eleventh landing and never finished, and by the time you reach the walkway you can hear the gulls before you see them. Your nan's flat is at the far end, the one with the window facing east, over the car park and the scrubby dunes to a strip of grey water.

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Dev from next door is already at the rail, smoking, pointing with the cigarette. "Watch," he says. The sun is going down behind the sea wall, a flat orange coin going soft at its edges, and it sinks into the water so slowly the whole horizon looks like it's being poured out. A cloud shaped like a loaf hangs over it. Two gulls turn in the air as if they have forgotten where they were heading.

Your nan used to say the sea never looks the same twice, and you took that for the sort of thing old people say to fill a silence. Now you watch the waves break white against the groyne, rolling in in lines that curl and stack like handwriting, and you count them the way she taught you, one, two, three, until the light goes.

When the sun drops out of sight, the window shows only your own reflection holding the bags, and Dev flicks his butt over the edge. "Same time tomorrow?" he asks. You say yes, carry the shopping inside, and leave the window open a crack so the sound of the water can keep climbing the stairwell.