Two raised middle fingers, each with the word Promise tattooed in black script along the finger, in a Lettering style on the Hand.

Promise tattoos on two middle fingers

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are shown with middle fingers raised toward the camera, and each finger carries the word Promise in thin, cursive black script running along its length. The linework is fine and even, with no shading, and the ink is a dark grey-black against the skin. The shallow focus softens the dark background, and one hand has painted purple nails visible at the top of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Hand Promise Script Word Finger Hand

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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

Ruth wrote it in biro on the roof of her dad's boat, somewhere below Hatton Locks, because she said a promise ought to be somewhere you could see it every time you lifted your hand. I told her biro washes off. She said that was the whole point of biro, and then she made me swear on the first finger she could reach, the rude one, that we would be back on the cut every August until one of us was too old to pole the boat through a lock.

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We were nineteen. By the time we were thirty the biro had long gone and the words hadn't, so we took the bus to a parlour above a chip shop in Banbury with a sketch folded in my purse and forty pounds between us. The tattooist, a quiet man called Col with a magnifying visor pushed up on his forehead, asked if we were sure. Ruth said she had been sure since the summer we were nineteen. I was too busy trying not to flinch at the needle to argue.

Every August since, we have brought the boat up from Braunston and tied it at the bottom of the flight. Last year the lock keeper, a cheerful man who studies everyone's knuckles, asked what the promise was. Ruth held up both hands, middle fingers high, and told him that was between us and the canal. He laughed, wound the paddles, and we went down the locks slow and side by side, the way we always do, with nobody needing to say who had kept their word.