Small black fine line tattoo of a heart outline joined to a semicolon, placed on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart and semicolon on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo shows an open heart outline on the side of a wrist, with a semicolon formed by its right-hand edge and a dot. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading. The tattoo sits near the centre of the frame against pale skin, with a dark red edge visible at the top corner.

Fine line Forearm Heart Semicolon Outline

Find an artist for this

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 ink had dried on the page of the ship's log, and Tom Ashby looked at the mark he had made at half past four without quite knowing why. The Clytemnestra was four weeks out of Liverpool, and the second mate had told him a log should end where the day ended, with a full stop, not with the loose tying-together his mother had done in her letters. Tom had chosen the semicolon anyway. He pressed the nib once more and let the dot darken.

Keep reading

Below deck the cook was singing something about Mary Ellen in the wrong key. Tom thought about the letter in his coat, unposted since Madeira, which said he would come home when the cargo was sold and not before. He had written it three times. Each draft closed with a full stop, and each time he tore it up, because a full stop meant the matter was settled, and he was not certain it was.

On the fifth morning the weather turned. Grey seas came over the rail and the mate bellowed for every hand forward. When the wind finally eased, Tom found a crate stencilled with a small heart-shaped mark and a stray curl of rope beside it, and he stood a long time looking at the pattern the cargo marks made against the wet deck, a curve for the heart and a hook for the pause that came after.

That night he took out the letter and posted nothing. Instead he wrote one line beneath the day's entry: Still at sea; will write again from port. He left the semicolon where it stood, blotted the page, and went up to take his watch.