Fine line tattoo of a red outlined heart leading into a black heartbeat line that becomes the word faith in cursive, on the upper arm.

Heartbeat line and faith script on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A red outlined heart sits on the left, joined by a single black heartbeat trace that rises to a peak and then flows into the cursive word faith. The linework is thin and even, with the heart in red and the trace and lettering in black. The tattoo is centred on smooth skin and runs horizontally across the frame, with a small mole visible near the lettering.

Fine line Upper arm Heart Heartbeat Ecg line Faith Script Word

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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

You are on your knees in the attic of Seaview House, on the cold boards under the eaves, when the roll of paper comes free from the rafters. It is thermal stock gone the colour of weak tea, curling at the edges like a shell. Your aunt Doreen ran this boarding house for thirty-one years and kept almost nothing she did not later regret keeping, so you should not be surprised to find this.

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You drag it into the light from the dormer and unroll it across the floor. The trace is a line of sharp peaks and flat troughs, each one dated in pencil in her small, upright hand. Near the start there is a heart drawn in red biro, and beside it she has written Mr Tenney, Thursdays. At the far end, where the paper runs out, someone has written one word and underlined it twice: faith.

You remember Mr Tenney, the lodger who stayed in the front room from the spring you were nine until the winter the sea froze along the groynes. He had a bad heart and a firm belief that the air off the North Sea would mend it. Every Thursday a doctor came over from Mundesley with a machine in a battered leather case, and while the needle wrote him out, Doreen sat on the edge of his bed and read him the tide tables aloud. He once told you that a heart keeps its own time whether or not anyone is listening.

You roll the paper back up slowly, the way she showed you, and lay it in the drawer of the hall table beside the guest book. Down in the kitchen the kettle has started to tick as it warms, and out past the dunes the tide is coming in, one long breath after another.