Small black and grey tattoos of a heart-shaped padlock and a key on two fingers of a hand, shown in a close-up photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart padlock and key on fingers

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a hand with two small tattoos, one a heart-shaped padlock on the upper joint of a finger and the other a key on the neighbouring finger. The linework is dark with grey shading that gives the padlock some depth. The image is shot against a dark background, with the tattoos centred and the fingers filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, and mind the flour on the step, because the ovens don't wait for a tale. You want to know why the bakery on Pell Street keeps a heart-shaped padlock hanging from the flour bin, and why nobody has ever tried to open it without the key? Sit on the crate and listen.

Keep reading

Tomas Hale, the locksmith two doors down, made that lock for his wife Ida the winter they married. He cut one key for it, slender, with a clover bow, and Ida gave it straight to Ferris, the boy who swept the ovens, because she said a key belonged to whoever did the hard work. Ferris was sweet on the miller's girl and rubbed that key between finger and thumb whenever he thought of her.

One February dawn the key was gone. Ferris had dropped it down the iron grate in the yard, and the water below was black. Tomas knelt at the lock for an hour with his picks, and it would not give, while the bread went cold in the trays and the sun came up grey over the chimneys.

Then Ida lifted the heart off its hook, turned it over, and laughed until she had to sit down on the step. Tomas had cut two keys, she said, and hidden the second in the bread knife drawer under the tea towels, where he kept the things he was proud of. Ferris ran for it, and the lock opened with a click like a cough. Inside lay a curl of paper in Tomas's square capitals: STILL YOURS. STILL OPEN.

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