Fine line lettering reading 'this is the beat of my heart' above a heartbeat trace tattoo on the inner wrist, shown in pale ink.

Heartbeat line and quote on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a wrist showing a fine line script quote, 'this is the beat of my heart', set above a single heartbeat trace line. The linework is thin and even, and the ink looks pale, almost white, against the skin. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame with plain background at the edges.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Heartbeat Heart Quote Script text Ecg line Wrist

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

Nine days out of Avonmouth and the swell has finally gone flat enough to hear yourself think, which is why you hear the boy before you see him. Tomas, the galley lad, is sitting on the bottom bunk in the sick bay with his sleeve rolled to the elbow, staring at the strip of paper curling out of the old machine. The ship's doctor left it running for him to watch, a thin grey line jumping up and down the graph like a gull landing on a wire.

Keep reading

"Is that me?" he asks.

"That's you," you say, and you sit beside him on the hard mattress. You have a scar of your own on the inside of the wrist from a winch cable thirty years back, so you press two fingers to the blue vein beside it and tell him to count with you. He mouths the numbers. The needle clicks, the pen scratches, and the peaks rise and fall in step with the knock under your fingertips.

He wants to know what it means when the line goes flat. You tell him the truth, which is that it means someone has stopped, and that the sea has taught you to respect the flat lines and the jumping ones equally. Then you tell him the other half, which the doctor taught you: a heart is only a pump with good manners, and it keeps its own time whether the ship is rolling or not.

Before supper you tear the strip off, fold it twice, and press it into his palm. Keep it until Montreal, you tell him. When you're old enough to be frightened of anything, look at it and find where your own pulse sits on the paper. He holds it against his wrist, closes his eyes, and the ship goes on through the quiet water with the line lying exactly where he is.