Small fine-line black cross tattoo on the inner wrist, photographed against a pale fabric background.

Small cross on an inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple black cross sits on the inner wrist, drawn with thin, slightly uneven black linework. The cross is the only subject and is set near the centre of the frame, with the wrist and hand visible above it. The ink is solid black against the skin, with no shading or colour, and the photograph is warm-toned with soft lighting.

Fine line Forearm 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 ring is in your left trouser pocket, and you keep pressing it through the cloth as the hired car bumps along the causeway towards St Ethel's. The reeds on either side are already bending under a wind that smells of diesel and cut hay. Your cousin Dawn is in the front seat, singing the wrong words to a song on the radio, and every few miles she turns round to check you still have it.

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You have it. The trouble is that the vicar's pen has run dry, and Aunt Maud, who has never once in her life let a dry pen stop her, produces her own fountain pen from her handbag. She uncaps it on her knee and says a man handing over a ring should carry a small mark of the church on him, so the Lord knows whose side he's on. You hold out your wrist. The nib skips at the crossbar and the lines come out thin and a little crooked, but she blows on the ink twice and says that will do.

At the altar your hands are steadier than you expected. The groom's are not. You pass him the ring when the vicar asks, and his fingers close over yours for a second, warm and clumsy, and you feel the ink on your wrist rub against your cuff. When the service ends and the bells go off over the flat fields like something dropped down a stair, you look down and the cross is still there, a little blurred at the edges, sitting exactly where she put it.

Later, in the vestry, Maud takes your arm and inspects her handiwork with the satisfaction of a woman who has done this before. Then she wipes her pen on a tissue and tells you that you are next, and you should start practising your face for the photographs.