Small black fine line tattoo of a cross made from leaf-shaped petals with spiral curls, on a pale forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Looped cross tattoo on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small stylised cross made of two pointed leaf or petal shapes crossing one another, with curled spirals at the centre. The linework is black with light grey shading along one side of the petals, giving them some depth. The tattoo sits centrally on a pale limb against a plain background, with a small amount of the surrounding skin and a towel visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down, the lot of you, before the urn boils dry again. Forty years and nobody's fixed the hatch in the kitchen. I'm going to tell you about the summer the Haldane twins made a cross out of willow in the top field, because none of you remember it and I'm the only one who kept the cutting.

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They weren't allowed near the churchyard, so they made their own. Two green withies, one laid across the other, the ends split and bent back into curls, like the fern heads you'd find under the hedge in May. Nan Haldane said the curls were for breathing. The boys said they were for steering. Nobody asked me, but I reckoned they were for holding on, because that's what willow does all winter, holds on in the wet until somebody comes back to fetch it.

Then in September Tom went off to the mill town and Ellen stayed. She tied a strip of her mother's blue ribbon to the crossing point every Sunday, and every Sunday it was gone by the next, carried off by the rooks or the wind or maybe by Tom himself coming home late, nobody knew. She never stopped tying it. That was the thing about Ellen.

Ellen, you're still sitting at the back, so wave to them. Thirty-odd years she kept that field, and the cross is still standing, grown over with bramble but standing. The willow took. Willow always takes if you put it in the right ground. Now who's going to help me with this urn?

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