Small black block lettering reading FRECKLE with a thin arrow pointing to a real freckle on bare skin.

Word FRECKLE with arrow to a real freckle

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of bare skin with the word FRECKLE tattooed in small, thin black capitals. A fine black arrow runs from the lettering down to a real freckle, so the tattoo labels the mark. The skin tone, soft texture and pores fill most of the frame, with the text in the upper right of the composition.

Lettering Other Arrow Word

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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

You have worked the lost property hatch at Hallam Junction for nineteen years, long enough to know that people label things when they are frightened of losing them. Brollies with names inked on the handle. Phones with a sticker reading PLEASE RETURN. A scarf with a cardboard tag that says SCARF, as if you might mistake it for a hen.

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On Tuesday a man in a donkey jacket sets a pocket watch on the counter and taps the case with one finger. Inside the lid someone has scratched a tiny arrow and the word HERE, pointing at a hairline crack no bigger than a grain of rice. He says his father did that in 1971, on the platform at Carlisle, so the watch would always know where it had been dropped. You don't ask why it matters to him. You write the ticket: one pocket watch, crack marked, claimant to attend with proof of name.

He doesn't come back for it. Three weeks later you open the drawer with a gloved hand and find the watch still ticking, the arrow worn soft from handling. You hold it under the strip light and see the crack exactly where the arrow says, though you could never have found it without being told. Somebody once decided a small true thing needed a pointer, so that nobody would sweep it away with the rest.

You close the drawer. Then you take a biro and reach for the next label, a child's red mitten with no name on it. Under the word MITTEN you draw a small arrow, and beside its tip you write HERE, then you put the mitten on the shelf where the light is best.