Black ink tattoo of a looping ribbon shape above the word love written in script, photographed on skin in a fine line style.

Looped ribbon and love script tattoo

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a tall looping ribbon or figure-eight form with a smaller loop inside it, drawn in thin black outline. The word love is written in cursive script beneath the loop, with a long tail stroke sweeping under the lettering. The ink is solid black against a glossy, reddened patch of skin, with the design centred in the frame.

Lettering Ribbon Loop Love Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The figure-eight was the first knot Ada's father taught her, before she could swim or read, and she tied it on the bollard of the Mary Jane while the lock below filled with a sound like rain on a tin roof. Her hands were cold. The canal smelled of diesel and wet leaves, and the lock-keeper's dog barked at the gate as if it had been waiting all morning to say so.

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Her father never wrote letters. He carved things into the tiller board and painted over them, so the words rose through the paint years later when the varnish wore thin. Last winter she had found one under the brass plate, scratched in his looping hand with a long tail trailing off the last letter: love. She had not known whether it was meant for her mother, for the boat, or for the knot itself, which he tied into every rope he owned, a loop folded inside a loop so nothing could slip.

The lock-keeper came down the steps with the paperwork. The Mary Jane had been sold to a couple from Leicester who wanted her for summer holidays, and they would collect her on Friday. Ada nodded and bent to the line, meaning to cast off, but her fingers found the figure-eight and stopped there, the small loop inside it pulling tight.

She did not undo it. She left the boat tied to the bollard, made a brew on the little stove, and sat on the step with the tiller board across her knees while the gates opened and a narrowboat full of children slid past in the dusk. Before walking to the bus she ran her thumb along the word under the paint. It was still there, and so, she decided, was the rope.