Black and grey fine line tattoo of an outlined heart joined with a stylised script letter, placed on the back of a neck.

Outlined heart and script letter on the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small outlined heart is joined to a stylised script letter, which is drawn with a looping stroke that runs through the base of the heart. The linework is thin and dark with soft grey shading along the edges, and the ink is set against smooth skin. The photograph is taken from behind, with the tattoo centred in the frame and the top of the head and hair at the edge.

Fine line Lettering Neck Heart Letter Script Outline

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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 first trays go in at ten to four, and by then my hands have stopped aching from the cold of the yard. Mrs Okafor's order sits on the steel bench in her sister's looping hand: two cobs, one scored with a heart, and a letter R underneath it so her son will know which loaf is his.

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I have cut that R for thirty years with the same bent razor lame, one pull that starts at the top of the stroke and loops back through the base of the heart like thread through a needle. My father taught me never to lift the blade. You lift and the crust tears, and the letter looks like a tired signature. Tonight the dough is wet and slides under my wrist, and the loop comes out too wide, bleeding into the point of the heart.

I should remake it. Instead I stand in the blue dark while the oven ticks up to heat and think about how many loaves have left this shop carrying a letter meant for somebody else. Nobody ever complains. They just look at the crust a moment longer before they tear it open.

At six a boy in a school jumper comes in, and he takes the cob with the wide loop without reading it. He tucks it under his arm, says ta, and is gone before the sun reaches the bakery windows. When the light comes up the R is still there, slightly lopsided, so I leave that loaf in the window where anybody passing can see it.