Black and grey Celtic triquetra knot tattoo on the nape of a woman's neck, with a black strappy harness visible below it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Celtic triquetra knot at the nape

Blackwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a black and grey tattoo of a Celtic triquetra, three interlinked loops inside a triangle, centred on the upper back at the base of the neck. The knotwork is outlined in black with pale grey bands, and the central and inner areas are filled with solid black ink. The plain background and the black straps of a top with a metal ring sit below the tattoo.

Blackwork Neck Triquetra Celtic knot Trinity knot

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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

The school hall still smells of floor polish and warm squash, and someone has stuck your name badge on upside down. You peel it off, turn it round and recognise the handwriting as your own careful capitals from the back of an exercise book. Thirty years has not made the lettering any less neat.

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Marnie spots you before you spot her. She is at the trestle table by the urn, still rubbing her thumb against her lip the way that got her detention in 1994. Priya is laughing at something on her phone beside her. Nobody says the old name for the three of you, the one Mr Ogden gave you after you handed in a project on Celtic knots and filled every margin with the same symbol: three loops that never start and never stop. Hayley said it meant none of you could ever fall out. Hayley is the reason the chair next to Marnie is empty.

They talk about the usual things: who married whom, who moved to Leeds, whose father died in March. Then Marnie reaches into her handbag and unfolds a square of paper gone soft as cloth. It is the drawing from the back of the geography book, the triquetra in blue biro, faint where the pen ran dry. Hayley had shaded the middle loop in black, pressing so hard the paper shines through.

You take the pen from the sign-in sheet and trace the knot again over the old lines, the way you did at fourteen. Your finger follows the loops round, over and under, until it arrives back where it began. Marnie watches you do it and says nothing, and for once that is enough.