Fine line script tattoo reading love in dark ink on the side of a finger, against a blurred dark background with bokeh lights.

Love script on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand with the word love written in thin, cursive script on the side of one finger. The linework is fine and even, in a single dark ink that looks black or dark plum. The background is dark and out of focus with scattered round lights, which keeps attention on the small lettering.

Fine line Lettering Hand Love Word 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

The band at the Gaiety has been playing the same waltz since eight, and by half ten your feet have stopped asking for mercy. You are minding the cloakroom hatch with a tin of safety pins and a ledger, because Maureen has gone home with a chest cold and Mr Platt says you may have the floor once the lights go down. Nobody asks you to dance. You count coats instead, forty-one of them, each with a card pinned to its collar.

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At the last waltz a sailor off the Humber ferry leans on the hatch and asks for the pencil. His knuckles are chapped red from the cold. He has a dance card of his own, stiff and yellowed, and he holds it out with the grin of a man who has rehearsed. You expect him to write his name. Instead he draws a slow, looping word across the bottom line, the letters leaning into one another like passengers on a crowded tram: love.

You tell him that isn't a name. He says it's the only thing on the card he's sure of, and the rest can be settled by the tide. Under the mirror ball the light breaks into coins across the floor, and he crosses to you without another word and asks for one dance, just the one. You say yes before Mr Platt can object.

The next morning, on the top deck of the number nine bus, you take the card out and read the word in the grey light. Rain has blurred the loops, but you can still follow the sweep of the l all the way to the e. You fold it into your glove and tell nobody, which is how you know it is the truest thing anyone has ever written to you.