Black ink infinity symbol tattoo on the inner forearm, with script lettering reading mother, daughter and love set within the loops and swirls.

Infinity symbol with script words on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink infinity symbol is formed from two looped halves, with script lettering following the curves of each loop. Swirling flourishes and a small ornamental curl sit inside the lower and upper loops, and the linework is fine and even against pale skin. The design is in black only and is centred on the forearm in a close, straight-on photograph.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Infinity Mother Love Script Swirl

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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

The sign over Ada's Eats was my mother's job for thirty-one years, and the spring she could no longer hold a brush steady, she put one in my hand without discussing it. I was twenty and could not letter a straight line. She made me practise on the backs of flour sacks until a capital A stopped wobbling, then until the tails of the letters curled the way hers did, as if each word wanted to go round again.

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The road out past the salt flats has no other reason to stop, so the board mattered. Every March the sun bleached the paint to chalk, and every March we scrubbed it down and started over. Mum liked two loops in the lettering, one above the other, and she said they were there to hold the words in place. I used to think it was showing off. Standing on the ladder with the wind pushing grit into the wet paint, I understood it was just how she kept her hand moving.

The week after the funeral, a long-haul driver pulled in at dusk, read the board aloud under his breath, and asked whether the place was still open. I said yes. He bought a coffee and a slice of pie he didn't finish, and watched me through the window while I climbed the ladder again with the last of the black enamel.

When the sign dried in the morning light, I had added a figure eight beneath the name, two round loops joined at the middle with my mother's curls inside them. It was crooked on the left and a little heavy on the right. It was the first thing I had made that she would have said needed another go, and I left it that way, because the road kept coming and so would I.