Close-up of a small fine line black cross tattoo on the inner wrist, with red painted nails and a pink and blue woven bracelet visible.

Small cross on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, simple cross is drawn in thin black ink on the inside of a wrist, centred near the crease. The lines are single and even, with slightly feathered edges, and the tattoo sits on a light skin tone against a grey concrete background. The photo is taken from above, with red nails and a woven bracelet at the edges of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Cross

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 first thing my uncle taught me at the Halden ferry was that the mark had to be small enough to miss. Two thin strokes of black ink, crossed near the middle, on the inside of the timber post where the rope rubs. Nobody from the customs house ever looked that low. You drew it when a boat got over safely, and you drew it with the same hand that had held the tiller, because the people who came after would need to know the water had been kind that night.

Keep reading

I kept the ink in a tin with a broken lid. In March the river ran brown and fast, and Sergeant Doyle came down the bank with his clipboard, asking whose boat had gone under the bridge. I told him the truth, that I had not seen. He stood a long while watching the current, then pulled his cap lower and said he had not seen anything either. He walked back up the slope without once glancing at the post.

That spring I drew four crosses. The last was for Ilse Marrow, who crossed at dusk with a girl wrapped in a fisherman's coat. I did not ask their business. I dipped the nib, steadied my hand against the wet wood, and made the upright first, then the bar, lighter than I meant to, so the line feathered where the grain drank it up.

In the morning the post was still there, and so was the cross, faint as a pencil mark. By June the rain would have taken most of it. That was the point. The river forgets everything it is given, so it fell to me to remember the crossings, one small line at a time.