Black ink infinity symbol with swirled ends and the word love in cursive script on a forearm.

Infinity symbol with love script on forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black infinity symbol with decorative swirls on its left loop flows into the word love, written in cursive script, on a forearm. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the solid black ink stands out against pale skin. A dark surface behind the arm keeps the focus on the tattoo, which sits across the centre of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Infinity Love Swirl Script

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, the bread won't go stale before I've finished. You want the true end of this, not the one the best man's cousins tell over the bar, so hush and let me begin where the rope begins, on a grey quay in Scarrow, with a rope-maker called Aggie Penhallow and her hands full of tarred hemp.

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Aggie had a husband, Tom, who went out on the herring boats every spring and came back every autumn smelling of salt and diesel. One October he didn't come back on time. The boat was late, then later, and the harbour wall filled with women in shawls. Aggie kept walking the length of her ropewalk, twisting strands clockwise, because her hands didn't know how to stop. She made one cord that never had an end. She ran it round a peg, doubled it back, looped it again, and where the loops crossed she worked a little curl like a wave breaking, so the cord would always have somewhere to turn.

Tom came in on the third morning, grey as the tide but breathing. Aggie didn't say a word. She took the cord from the peg, laid it across his palm, and asked him to count the loops. He got to the middle and lost his count, and she laughed for the first time that week and said that was the point. A figure of eight lying on its side has no beginning to find and no end to reach, only the place where the two sides pass each other and keep going.

Mind you, the story doesn't stop there, and nor does the cord. Tom wore it round his wrist until it frayed, and Aggie, being Aggie, made him another. That's the same pattern you'll see on half the quays in Cornwall now, if you know how to look. So raise your glasses to the happy couple, and to the knot that never gets to its last turn, and mind the bread on the way past.