Traditional style colour tattoo on the back of a hand showing a dagger through a red heart with a blue banner reading ROMANTIC and purple flowers.

Dagger, heart and banner on the hand

Traditional · Hand · Colour · Photo

A dagger pierces a red heart decorated with yellow scrollwork, with a blue banner across the heart that reads ROMANTIC. Two purple flowers with green leaves sit on either side of the heart, and bold black outlines define the shapes. Bright colour dominates the design, which is set against a plain dark background on the back of the hand.

Traditional Hand Dagger Heart Banner Flower Scroll Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The word came before the picture. Mr Dunmore wrote it on a card in capitals and propped it against the sugar bowl at the Blue Plate, then slid it across the counter with a pencil stub. ROMANTIC, it said, and underneath, in smaller letters, Thursday, six o'clock, back room, bring the money in an envelope. You had been courting Ada Pryce since the spring dance at the grange hall, and you had not yet found a way to say anything that did not sound like a seed catalogue. Perhaps this would do it.

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The back room smelled of methylated spirit and cigarette ends. Dunmore had the design already traced on greased paper: a dagger with a hilt like a knot of brass scrollwork, and a heart beneath it the red of a fire engine. He tapped the blade with the pencil. 'Everybody wants the blood,' he said. 'Nobody wants to explain it. Put the word across the middle and the blood goes quiet.' He chose a blue ribbon for the banner, the blue of a Sunday suit, and two purple flowers for the gaps, their petals as flat as paper cut-outs. You watched the needle go in and out and tried not to flinch, and he talked the whole time about a girl in Dayton who had kept her ring for twenty years.

When it was done he wiped the hand with a cloth that came back pink and held it up to the bulb. 'Heart's on the outside now,' he said. 'Whoever you show it to will see it first.' You walked home along Mill Street with the bandage stiff on your palm, and when Ada opened the door you held the hand out flat, the way you would show a card in a game you meant to win. She read the banner. She read it again. Then she laughed and took your hand in both of hers and turned it over so the dagger faced the lamp.