Colour tattoo on the inner forearm of a woman's face with hands covering her eyes, its hair and hands filled with blue and purple galaxy shading and stars, with a green shape below the chin.

Woman with hands over eyes, starry forearm tattoo

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A woman's face in a pale, softly shaded portrait has her eyes covered by two hands, with her hair and the hands filled with a blue and violet night-sky effect dotted with white stars. A dark curved line sits near the top right, and a green shape forms a collar or garment beneath the chin. The smooth blending of colour contrasts with the flat, illustrative outline of the figure, and the design is framed centrally on the forearm.

Forearm Woman Portrait Face Hand Eye Galaxy Star Night sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Mum kept the lamp trimmed and her hands ready. On the Oxford stretch, when the cut went black between locks, she'd stand at the tiller and tell me to shut my eyes and then cover them too, palms flat, so no light could get in at all. Count, she said, and open them slowly when you reach the end. I never told her I could only manage forty before I started peeking.

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The night I turned nineteen the engine died below Abingdon. Dad had gone ahead with the lock chain and I was alone on the cabin roof with a torch that had dimmed to amber. I did what she taught me. Palms over my eyes, the dark pressing close, and then a scatter of small bright points swam up behind my lids, some drifting, some fixed in their places. Cassiopeia is where the hands go, she used to say. I could almost hear her laughing at me for being nineteen and sentimental.

When I took my hands away the sky was no clearer than before, cloud thick over the water meadows and one lamp burning at the bridge. But the stars stayed with me all the way down to the next lock, pricking at the backs of my wrists whenever I moved them.

Dad came back with the chain and found me still sitting there. I said I'd been counting. He asked how far I'd got. Past where she stopped, I told him, and he nodded as if that was the only answer a bargee could give.