Colour tattoo of a grey and teal ribbon forming a heart, with a small red heart and script initials, on the upper chest.

Ribbon heart with script initials on chest

Traditional · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A heart formed by two looping ribbons, one grey and one teal, with a small red heart on the lower ribbon. Two sets of script initials sit within the loops. The ribbon edges have soft grey shading, with flat colour fills and bold black outlines.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ribbon came from a haberdasher in Margate still wound on its cardboard spool, and you spent the night before the wedding unpicking it across the kitchen table. Grey for the bride's side, teal for the groom's, because Ruth had been firm that the two should meet in a heart and never blur. Her mother's thimble sat beside your cup of tea, dented on one side from a fall down the stairs decades ago.

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The brief was simple. Two loops folded into one heart, tails tied low like a bow, and two sets of initials stitched inside the curves in the thin black script Ruth had copied from an old church register. You cut the lengths, pinned them, and sewed the letters with the finest needle in the tin. GH. LM. Each stitch took longer than it should have, because the thread kept snagging on a tiny red bead Ruth had insisted go on the lower ribbon, where nobody would look unless they were close.

Near two in the morning Ruth rang from her spare room, unable to sleep. She asked whether the heart would hold if it was carried on a cushion down the aisle. You told her it would hold if the knots were tight. She said that was what her mother had said about the marriage, and then she laughed, and so did you, and the phone stayed quiet while the kettle boiled.

At seven you pressed the finished heart flat under a tea towel and tied it to the cushion's corner. The red bead sat on the lower ribbon where it had always been meant to go, a small bright point against the grey. When the bride lifted the cushion she did not look at the letters first. She looked at the bead, then at you, and said nothing at all.

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