Bold black tattoo of a letter A intertwined with a flowing heart and sweeping strokes, placed on the ankle.

Heart and letter A on an ankle

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo shows a stylised letter A woven together with an open heart outline and long tapering swooshes that extend above and below the design. The linework is thick and smooth with uniform black ink, and there is no colour or shading. The design sits centrally on the ankle against a plain background of skin and a blue padded surface.

Lettering Ankle Heart Swirl Monogram

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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 guest book at Marram House had a split spine, held shut with a clothes peg, and every July somebody new signed it in the same looping hand. I kept the register on the hall table with the tide times pinned beside it. That summer the name at the top of the page was Alma Greave, room four, booked for three weeks and paid in advance with old five-pound notes that smelled of camphor.

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She walked the cliff path each morning with a fountain pen in her coat, and each evening she came back with a sheet of paper folded into quarters. She never let me see what was on it. I asked once, and she said it was an alphabet she was practising, one letter a day, and that A was the hardest because it needed a roof, a floor, and somewhere for the rain to go.

On the last Thursday the wind dropped and the sea went flat as slate. She came down to breakfast with the paper unfolded beside her teacup. The A on it was drawn in heavy black ink, its crossbar looped through a small open heart, with long strokes trailing above and below as if the nib had refused to lift from the page.

"You finished it," I said.

"I finished the letter," she said. "The heart was the bit I didn't plan."

She paid her bill, left the key on the hall table beside the tide times, and walked down to the sand. When the tide came in over her footprints, I could not tell where the A had gone.