Small black fine line cross tattoo on the side of a finger, with a wristwatch and chain bracelets on the wrist.

Small cross tattoo on a finger

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand resting over another hand, showing a small black cross tattooed on the side of one finger. The cross has thin, even lines in solid black ink and sits upright on the skin. A steel wristwatch with a dark blue bezel and several chain bracelets are visible on the wrist, and a patterned carpet fills the background.

Fine line Other Cross Watch Bracelet Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock at Stanwick Bottom had a timber post with forty-one crosses cut into its grey face, one for every boat that had gone through on my father's watch. I kept the count now. He taught me the knife work before his chest gave out, and he taught me that a cross cut square and upright was the only mark the office would sign off without questions. Thin lines, no flourishes, nothing you could mistake for a fish.

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The Marigold came up out of the mist in the second week of October, low in the water with coal and smelling of paraffin. Her skipper threw me a rope without a word and I made it fast round the bollard. While the gates groaned shut behind her, a girl of about nine sat on the cabin roof swinging her boots and watched me work the paddles.

"Why do you cut them?" she asked. I told her each cross was a boat, that the water remembers nothing, so somebody has to. She thought about this for the whole rise of the lock. "Which one's ours?" I said the post was nearly full and there was only one square of wood left, down by the waterline. She climbed down the ladder, took the knife from my belt without asking, and cut a cross there, slow and a little crooked, then pressed the lines straight with the flat of her thumb.

When the gates opened, the Marigold slid out onto the brown water and the girl lifted her hand. The cross stayed behind, wet and black, the only one on the post that had been cut by somebody who was not yet old enough to know how long the water keeps a boat.