Black lettering reading Anam Cara in a flowing script across the inner wrist, with the hand visible below.

Anam Cara lettering on the wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the words Anam Cara in black ink across the wrist, with the hand relaxed below and a dark background behind. The letterforms have smooth, even linework and solid black fill, with a slightly calligraphic character to the capitals. The image is in neutral skin tones with no colour ink, and the lettering sits centrally across the frame.

Lettering Forearm Text Wrist

Find an artist for this

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

The first trays are already in the proving cupboard when Maeve shoulders through the back door, rain dripping from her hood onto the flour sacks. You don't look up from the scales. You know her by the bolt, which sticks and then gives, and by the way she apologises to it under her breath. She sets two paper cups on the steel bench, one with your name misspelt in marker, and pretends the fortnight of silence never happened.

Keep reading

Your grandmother used to say that everyone needs one anam cara, a soul friend who sees the worst of you before breakfast and stays for the rest. She said it in Irish, over porridge that tasted of salt, and you were nine and thought it meant someone who wouldn't tell on you. Maeve was the one who had told on you, at the sea wall, the summer you were both seventeen, and you had never forgiven her for being right about the boy with the van. Then she left for Galway and sent postcards of cliffs that said nothing at all.

"The sourdough's gone cold," she says, which is her way of asking whether you're still angry. "Leave it," you say, and then, because the oven timer has started its tick, you both move at once, lifting the trays with the same tea towel and the same bent elbow.

By five the window has turned from black to the colour of weak milk. You score the first loaf with one slash, long and clean, and Maeve laughs because it opens the way it always did, the crust splitting along a line neither of you planned but both of you somehow knew was there.