Small solid black cross tattoo on the upper chest near the shoulder, with a woman in a red plaid shirt and black top beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black cross on the upper chest

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple black cross sits on the upper chest, just below the collarbone and near the edge of the shoulder. The lines are plain and even, with a slightly soft, inked look. The background shows a brick wall and green foliage, and the cropped frame includes only the neck, shoulder and upper chest.

Chest Cross

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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 ewes have been bawling since three, and the lamb that won't stand is in a crate by the range, but you're out in the yard with the torch clamped in your teeth, knocking the ice off the trough with your boot heel. Every wire on the old hurdles has gone white with hoarfrost, and the gate sings when you lean on it.

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Your sister rang at dusk to say the solicitor needs signatures by Friday. You haven't told her you already know the farm is going. The cross you made last week from two ash offcuts and a length of baler twine is still standing in the top field, where the old ewe was buried in October. You bound it with the knots your father taught you, the ones that hold in wet weather and slip free when you pull the right end.

At four the lamb lifts its head. You rub it down with straw the way he showed you, and it sneezes, and you laugh out loud in the empty yard, which sends a robin off the gatepost in a flurry. Frost is climbing the kitchen window in fern shapes. You breathe on one square until a clear patch opens, and there are the lights of the Hendersons' place across the valley, and the lane, and the dark line of the field.

You walk up at first light with the feed sack on your back. The cross is a black stroke against the grey grass, and you stop beside it long enough to read the top bar the way you'd read a name. Then you turn for the house and leave the field gate open behind you, because the cattle will want the lane soon enough.