Black fine line tattoo of a Chi Rho monogram with Alpha and Omega inside a laurel wreath on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chi Rho monogram in a laurel wreath on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a forearm, with a denim jacket sleeve and grey sweatshirt cuff at the top of the frame. The tattoo shows the Chi Rho monogram crossed by a thin diagonal line, with the letters Alpha and Omega beside it, all set inside a circular wreath of leaves. The linework is thin and even in solid black ink, with no shading or colour, and the design is centred on the inner forearm against a plain light wall.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Laurel wreath Monogram Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Uncle Tom,

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The board came down from over the chapel door on Tuesday, and I have spent three evenings with a magnifier and a jar of size trying to lift the old gold off the wreath without taking the leaves with it. Mr Hal Pollard painted it in 1931, going by the card tucked behind the frame, and he did everything in one hand: the two curved Greek letters either side, the loops of the P, the laurel running round like a clock with no numbers. Nobody had touched it since the war.

The vicar wants it back up by Easter. He says the congregation remembers it, though I have yet to find a soul who can tell me what the letters say. I told him they say Christ, in the old way, and he looked pleased with me, as if I had passed a test.

Here is the strange part. Under the third leaf on the left, where the gold had flaked to bare wood, Pollard had scratched a thin pencil line straight through the middle of the monogram, corner to corner, the way you would mark a guide before you start. He never painted over it. I thought at first it was a slip, but it sits so exactly on the centre that I have decided it was a rule he kept to himself, so the thing would come out balanced whatever his hand was doing that day.

I am not going to fix it. Tomorrow I will lay the first gold on the omega and leave the line showing. If anyone asks, I will say the man who made it wanted a way back to the middle.

Love to Aunt Joan, Nell