Black and white photo of a fine line cross tattoo on the side of a finger, with hands resting together.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white close-up of two hands resting together, with a small cross tattoo on the side of one finger. The cross has thin, dark linework and sits between the knuckles. The soft focus and muted tones keep attention on the tattoo, and the fabric behind the hands is out of focus.

Fine line Hand Cross Finger Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dai Morris had never managed a straight line at school, so when his older brother Tomos asked him to do the job, he took a sewing needle from their mother's tin and held it in the lamp flame until the point blackened. The kitchen table in Ynysfach smelled of paraffin and carbolic soap. Tomos laid his hand flat on the oilcloth and said nobody at the colliery would ever know.

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The cross was meant to be no wider than a barley grain. Dai pricked it in just above the second knuckle, using the blue-black ink from the Post Office ledger pen that Nan had kept in her apron, and each time Tomos flinched Dai stopped and blew on the skin. "Hold still, or it'll go crooked like your Sunday collar." Outside, the wheel at the top of the pit turned, and the coal trucks rattled past the chapel wall in the dark.

Tomos went down the next morning on the six o'clock cage. The mark took three weeks to settle, blurring at the edges like a letter left out in rain, and by Christmas it was only a faint line that Dai could find if he knew where to look. Their mother never asked about it. She only set an extra place at the table on the nights the cage came up late.

When it finally came up on the Thursday, Tomos was first out, black to the eyes, and he held his hand up under the lamp so Dai could see the cross had held. Dai pressed his thumb to it the way Nan used to test bread. "Still crooked," he said, and Tomos laughed so hard he had to sit down on the wet step.