Fine line black tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle on the inner forearm, with stippled dots in the spray.

Wave inside a circle on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a curling wave with a crest breaking to the right, enclosed in a thin circular outline. The linework is fine and single weight, with hatched lines describing the water and small stippled dots scattered across the crest and the face of the wave. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the wave fills most of the frame against a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since Tuesday, and Mrs Okonedo has given up on her awning, so I am writing this on the back of a fish crate with the ledger propped against a tin of pilchards. Your father would have laughed. He always said the Humber could drown a man in a teacup if it had a mind to.

I went down to the harbour this morning, the way you used to make me, to look at the water. It was grey and heavy and stacked up against the wall in those curling heaps, each one lifting its white top like a hand about to slap the stone. I counted the little spits of foam that flew off the crests, hundreds of them, each one caught for a second before it fell back. You would have had a name for every one.

Then the boat from Hull came round the breakwater with its lights still on, and a gull dropped straight through the spray without a single wingbeat, and I thought, well, that is the shape of it, isn't it. The sea goes round and round and sends everything back. Nothing is lost, only moved about.

Come home at Easter if the Mary Ellen gets in. I will keep the good kettle on and the shutters half up. Bring me one of those shells you said looked like a cupped ear.

Love, Mum

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