Two wrists with matching fine line tattoos of a knotted cord bracelet with an anchor motif in black ink, placed on the forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching anchor cord tattoos on two wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown close to the wrist, each with a matching tattoo of a thin cord bracelet tied in a knot. The left design is a dark cord with a hook or anchor shape, while the right design has an anchor with a lighter, open outline and a slightly shaded shank. The ink is black and grey on skin, with a soft, blurred background and even natural lighting.

Fine line Forearm Anchor Cord Bracelet Knot Wrist Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, and mind the fire, it spits when the wind comes round off the north shore. Aye, that's the one. Now, the rope. Every boat on Skerra had a length of it coiled in the bow, and every child on Skerra learned the fisherman's knot before they learned their letters. Mairi Gunn had the quickest hands on the island, and the summer before the herring boats went out for the last time, she tied a length of tarred cord round her sister's wrist.

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Her sister, Ishbel, was going south to the cannery at Oban, and Mairi would not let her go without something to hold. So she took the spare hook from their father's tackle box, bent it into the shape of the old anchor they'd dragged out of the shingle as girls, and worked it into the knot with a bodkin and a little soot. The cord was black, the hook was black, and when Ishbel held her wrist up to the lamp it looked like a thing that had always been there.

Then Mairi did the thing the old men still argue about. She tied her own cord that same night, but she left the hook open at the bend, so the metal showed pale where the lamplight touched it. 'You keep the one that holds,' she said. 'I'll keep the one that waits.'

Ishbel went south. The cannery was loud, the mainland was grey, and the letters came every month with a pressed fern tucked inside. Some winters the ferry didn't run, and Mairi would walk out to the end of the pier and count the cords on the rail. Whatever the mainland folk make of it, the anchor held. Both of them did.