Two matching black script word and infinity symbol tattoos with a red stripe, one on each wrist of two people holding hands.

Matching mizpah and infinity wrist tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two wrists are shown side by side, each with the same tattoo: the word mizpah in black script above an infinity symbol. A red stripe runs through the loop of each infinity sign, while the outline and lettering are black. The lettering is smooth and bold-lined, and the hands are held together against a dark background.

Lettering Forearm Infinity symbol Script word Ribbon Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp-room man at Scar Pit stopped asking questions years ago, so when you arrive at the gate at half five with a length of red wool wound twice around your finger, he just nods towards the cage bell. Your brother Tomas went down at six. Your mother stitched that thread into both your coats the winter the strike ended. She said it would hold you to each other the way the old words did, the ones her own mother kept on the mantel: the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.

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You never liked the words much. They sounded like something said over a grave. But you liked the shape, two loops pinched together at the middle, and how Mam had pulled the red through so it ran along the lower curve like a seam you could follow with your thumb. Tomas said it looked like a sum that never came out. You told him that was the point of it.

The afternoon the roof came down in the east gallery, the shift ran late and the gate stayed shut. You stood at the rail counting men up the cage the way Mam counted washing on the line, and when the last lamp came up it was Tomas's, dented but his. He held out his hand before he said a word, and you laughed too loud because the thread had frayed and needed rewinding, and he had kept his coat on the peg for you all the same.

Mam had been right about the wool. You wound it again on the bench while the oil dripped, and by the time the cage had settled you had the loop tight enough that neither of you would be the first to let go. Tomas said the sum still didn't come out. You said it didn't have to. You only had to keep the red showing.