Two people hold hands over autumn leaves, each with a small black fine line symbol of a cross above a loop tattooed on the inner wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching symbol tattoos on two wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching small tattoos sit on the inner wrists of two people whose hands are clasped. Each tattoo is a simple black symbol made of a cross above a loop with a diagonal stroke through it, drawn in thin, even linework with no shading. The background of red, orange and brown fallen leaves provides warm contrast to the pale skin and dark ink.

Fine line Forearm Symbol Cross Loop Matching tattoo Autumn leaves

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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 relief rope had frayed again by the time the equinox gales reached Carrack Skerry, so I went out along the gallery with a coil of new line over one shoulder and a tin of varnish I had been warned not to spill on anything I cared about. Mam was still on the mainland with the boat, and the lamp room had only me and the gulls to look at it.

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My grandfather had cut a sign into the brass collar above the lens, a cross standing on a ring with a single stroke slanting through the loop, and he never told anyone what it meant. Mam said it was a keeper's mark, the kind men made so the next one would know which hook held which rope. I used to trace it with a fingertip while the wick trimmed, cross, ring, stroke, cross, until the shape stopped looking like a word and started looking like a place I could walk to.

The wind came round to the south-west at dusk and the lamp guttered twice. I climbed the iron ladder with the new wick in my teeth and found the stroke had worn almost through where a hundred hands had steadied themselves on it. I set the wick by feel, the way he must have done, and the flame caught and stood up straight in the glass. Below me the sea was white on the rocks, and somewhere out past the ledges a small boat was turning for the gap because it had seen the light come back.

Ada wrote later that she had watched the flame from the deck and knew the house was lit before she could make out the tower. I never told her about the mark. Some signs are only for the people who need to find their way back in the dark, and some are for the ones who stay behind to hold the rope.