Two hands with small fine line chain tattoos in black ink running along the index fingers, one on the back of each finger.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chain tattoos on two index fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands rest close together, each index finger showing a thin chain of linked black ink running along its length. The linework is fine and simple, with the links drawn as small loops and the ink appearing dark grey to black on the skin. The composition is a casual close view with the fingers in the foreground, and blue patterned fabric and grey trousers fill the background.

Fine line Hand Chain Finger

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

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The ferry was late again, so I sat on the bench outside the chandlery with the rain coming sideways off the harbour and counted the links on my finger the way you taught me, one loop for each year we sat up arguing about the lighthouse. Eleven. Eleven loops and the little bit at the knuckle where the ink always blurs. Mr Okonedo at the stall beside the fish market says the needle he uses is older than either of us, and he wiped it on a tea towel printed with gulls before he started, which I thought was the most reassuring thing I'd seen all morning.

You'll want to know whether it hurt. It did, but in the small, honest way of a splinter, not the way of a thing that means harm. He held my hand flat on his knee and talked about the price of mackerel the whole time so I'd have something to be annoyed about instead of afraid. By the end the chain looked less like jewellery and more like something I had always been carrying and had only now bothered to write down.

I saw the boy from the bakery come past with his cart, the one who lost his brother to the trawler last winter. He stopped, looked at my finger and then at his own, and held it up without a word. There was a thin line of links on his too. I didn't ask. Some things are only said with the hands.

So, the lighthouse. I've decided you were right about the light and wrong about the tide, and I'll tell you the rest when you're back. Keep the other finger for me. I've left the stall's card under the teapot.

All my love, and wet socks, Isolde