Two raised hands, each with the word Promise tattooed in black script along the middle finger.

Promise lettering on two middle fingers

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are shown with middle fingers raised, and each finger carries the word Promise written vertically in thin black script. The linework is clean and the ink is a dark blue-black with no shading. The red and burgundy nail polish contrasts with the ink, and the plain, softly lit background keeps the focus on the lettering.

Lettering Hand Promise Script word

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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

Mabel and Ada had not spoken since the Whitsun fair, when Ada sold the last of the Furnival hens to a man from Skipton and kept the coins. All through a wet spring they worked the same lock at Hebden Bridge, one from each bank, and whenever one looked up the other raised her middle finger and went back to her paddles.

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It was Nell, the lock-keeper's wife, who put a stop to it. She sat them both down in the lock cottage with a pot of soot ink and a bodkin, and told them a grudge kept in the heart rots like a windfall, so it had better be kept where you could see it. Ada went first, grumbling, then Mabel, and each had the word written down the length of her finger in small careful letters. Promise, Nell said. Now you can't say you forgot.

The April flood came down the valley two weeks later. Ada's boat tore loose from its mooring below the gate, and Mabel went into the brown water after the rope without stopping to think about hens or coins. They were hauled onto the towpath together, coughing and blue-lipped, and for a while neither of them said anything at all.

Then Mabel lifted her hand, and Ada lifted hers, and they pressed the two raised fingers together in the lamplight. The word ran across them both, Promise, Promise, and Nell, watching from the cottage door, shook her head and went back inside to put the kettle on.