Black and white photograph of a small fine line cross tattoo on a woman's upper back, near the shoulder blade, with a denim jacket slipped off one shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a woman with her hair tied up, a denim jacket draped off one shoulder and her hands holding the fabric. A small, thin upright cross sits on the upper back beside the shoulder blade. The linework is fine and solid black, and the image is monochrome with soft grey tones across the skin and background.

Fine line Back 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

Sit yourself down on that sack, the oven's still climbing and the flour won't mind your boots. You want to hear this before the first van comes, because once the shutters go up nobody listens to an old man.

Keep reading

Every morning for forty years Hal Dacre stood at the bench in the dark of Tollgate Lane and cut a cross into every loaf. Not deep. A flick of the lame, a blade no longer than a child's finger, just enough to let the crust open when the heat got into it. The young lad who came in the winter of the great frost thought it was superstition and cut his crosses like he was carving a gate. He pushed the blade in to the knuckle. Hal said nothing for a week.

Then one Tuesday the loaves came out of the oven split wide open, like hands, and the lad stood there with the tray shaking. Hal picked one up, broke it, and handed him the heel. 'Too much faith in the knife,' he said, 'not enough in the dough.' That was all the lesson there ever was.

So when you see a cross on a loaf, you know someone has had to learn how little pressure it takes. Light hand. Let the thing rise. And when the sun comes up over the chimneys, look along the window ledge: the thin line of lamplight from the door falls across the flour exactly that way, one stroke, and then it's gone.