Black and white photo from behind of a person with hair in a bun, showing a small fine line cross tattoo at the nape of the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross tattoo at the nape of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A person with their hair tied in a loose bun is photographed from behind against a pale wall, with bare shoulders visible. A single small cross sits just below the hairline on the neck, drawn in thin, dark, solid black linework. The photograph is monochrome and the tattoo is the sole focal point, with plenty of empty space around it.

Fine line Neck 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 thing about a cross this small is that nobody asks what it means, they only ask whether it hurt, and I always say the neck is nothing, the neck is just a place where the skin is thin and the nerves are bothered. My sister Marguerite had one first, on her ankle, and our mother cried in the car park at the Dunmore parish hall because she thought it was a sign of giving up. It was not. Marguerite was twenty-two and had just finished a shift stacking tins at the co-op, and she wanted something she could put her hand on without anyone else seeing.

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So when I went to the little studio above the bakery on Carrow Street, I told the artist, a woman called Ines with ink on her knuckles and a radio playing the shipping forecast, that I wanted one thin line down and one across, nothing fancy, nothing you could read from the bus. She drew it on paper first and then on a scrap of tracing film, and held the film against the back of my neck with two fingers and tilted her head to check it against my shoulder blades. She said the best crosses sit where a hand would rest if you were leaning on someone from behind.

I keep thinking about that when I wash my hair and tip my head forward under the shower. The bun I wear for work hides it entirely. Only at the end of the day, when the pins come out and the hair falls down, does anyone see it, and mostly it is me doing the seeing, in the bathroom mirror with the light off behind me.