Two crossed forearms in black fine line ink, one with a small cross and the other with angular geometric lettering that appears to read GOD, both on the inner forearm.

Small cross and angular lettering on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are crossed over one another, each showing a small black tattoo. The upper arm bears a thin, straight-lined cross, and the lower forearm has angular lettering in fine black linework that appears to spell GOD. The ink is black on a dark background with a grey sleeve visible, and the composition is tightly framed on the arms.

Fine line Lettering Geometric Forearm Cross Lettering Geometric line

Find an artist for this

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 barge Patience went down the Ouse in the hard winter of the frost fair, with two brothers aboard and a hold full of Welsh slate. Nobody on the bank wanted the tiller that morning, because the river had a bend called the Elbow where the current ran backwards under the ice and took a boat every generation or so. Tomas, the elder, said he would take her through. Ned said nothing, which was how Ned always agreed.

Keep reading

At the Elbow the ice cracked like a musket. Tomas bellowed for the pole, and Ned ran the length of the deck with the iron boat-hook in both fists, jabbing it into the grey water until it caught on something solid. The barge swung, groaned, and stopped broadside to the bank. Their mother had scratched a small cross into the gunwale years before, with a tenpenny nail, so the mill men would know which boat was hers. Tomas laid his palm over it while the hull shuddered, and the Patience came round.

They tied up at the mill that night. Ned sat on the hatch cover with the hook across his knees and cut a line of angular letters into its ash handle with his penknife, the squared capitals the lock-keepers used for depth marks. The miller's wife, who could read them, asked what they meant. Ned turned the handle in the lamplight and tapped the letters one by one, G, O, D, the last cuts still pale in the wood.

Tomas never asked him why he chose those letters. Years later the hook hung above the mill door, and anyone who came asking about the Patience was shown the handle first, then the cross on the gunwale, which the river had never managed to take.