Two people's inner forearms side by side, each with a small black outlined tattoo of two interlocking hearts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching interlocking hearts on two forearms

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are pressed close together, each carrying a small tattoo of two interlocking heart outlines in solid black ink. The linework is clean and even, with the hearts sitting near the inner forearm. The image is in black ink only, set against warm skin tones and a wooden floor.

Forearm Heart Outline

Find an artist for this

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 ewes were lambing early that year, and Dad said the cold would finish us before the snow did. I was up every two hours with a torch between my teeth, dragging wet lambs out of the straw and rubbing them down with sacking while Nell sat on an upturned bucket and held the lantern steady. She never complained. She just kept her forearm pressed against mine every time we swapped places at the gate, as if we were two halves of a hinge that wouldn't swing unless it touched.

Keep reading

On the third night a ewe went down in the far pen and wouldn't rise. Nell wrapped her own coat around the poor thing and I went for the vet's number on the back of the feed-shed door, though we both knew the phone line had been dead since Tuesday. We managed it between us, the two of us kneeling in the muck with our sleeves shoved up, our skin the same temperature for once because we were both so frozen. When the lamb finally slid out grey and still, Nell swore at it, then breathed into its mouth until it sneezed.

In the morning we inked the thing on each other's arms with a biro and a sewing needle, because that was what we had and because Mum had forbidden us from going into town. Two hearts, one hooked through the other, the way the ewes stood with their heads together against the wind. It stayed legible for about a week, which was long enough for Dad to notice and say nothing at all.

When the thaw came, the marks were gone from my arm. Nell's was still there, faint blue under the skin, and she said that was the one that counted.