Two wrists showing metallic gold lettering reading Single inside a heart outline on the left and silver lettering reading Taken on the right, in a script style on the forearm near the wrist.

Metallic Single and Taken wrist tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two wrists are shown side by side with the word Single in gold script inside an outlined heart on the left, and the word Taken in silver brush-style script on the right, with small sparkle marks beside it. The lettering is smooth and bold with a metallic finish, and the ink reads as foil rather than black ink. The pale background and a pink paper flower at the edge of the frame keep the focus on the wrists.

Lettering Forearm Heart Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas had the heart in tweezers, a gold ring of foil no bigger than a fingernail, and he held it up to the lamp as though it were a coin he suspected. "Gold doesn't take on damp skin," he said. "Silver's worse. It sulks." Across the counter, the queue at the Lanternfield Registry shuffled under the vent, each person holding out a wrist the way they might have held out a ticket.

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The registry had printed relationship status in foil since the flood years, when paper ran short and nobody trusted ink to stay where it was put. Single went in gold, inside a heart, for anyone who wanted the harbour to know they were open to conversation. Taken went in silver, with its little spark strokes, and it was meant to be final. Tomas had set ten thousand of each. He had never once been asked for a third word, though the old clerks swore someone had tried to order Complicated in 2390 and been refused for want of a font.

Ines came in last, late in the shift, with a cardboard tube under her arm. She unrolled a drawing on the bench: a ferry ticket, a folded note, and a sketch of a hand with a silver mark already placed. "I'd like the heart put on the other one," she said. "The one for my brother. He's had Taken since spring and he's never once looked happy about it."

Tomas squinted. "That's not how it works."

"I know. I'm asking if it could." He sighed, pressed the gold heart to the corner of the drawing, and rubbed it down with his thumb until the outline held. "Gold travels," he said. "Silver stays where it's put." Ines paid in ferry tokens and left the tube open on the bench. Behind her the lamp caught the foil and threw a small bright ring onto the wall, and for a moment it looked like a window someone had decided to leave open.