Black and grey photograph of a small cross tattoo on the back of a hand between the knuckles, with rings and a pinstripe jacket sleeve in view.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small cross tattoo on hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close shot of a hand resting against a dark pinstriped jacket, showing a small, simple cross tattoo on the back of the hand near the knuckles. The cross is drawn in thin, dark solid lines and sits against pale skin. The hand wears two rings, and the monochrome composition keeps the focus on the tattoo and the hand.

Hand Cross Hand Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The pinstripes went wrong twice before Thursday, and I will not have you telling your mother I let a grown man walk up the aisle with his stripes running uphill. Forty-one years I have cut cloth on Cable Street and I know when a line is honest. So I unpicked the lapel three times until the chalk ran true across the chest and down the sleeve, and when Danny stood in front of the long mirror he said nothing at all, which from him is a sonnet.

He came in on Tuesday with the rings in a cigarette tin, two of them, one heavy and square, one knotted like old rope. He wanted them sewn into the inside pocket so he would not lose them on the dance floor. I told him rings belong on fingers and pockets belong to coins, and he laughed and said his hands would be full enough on the day, so I gave him the pocket.

Here is the thing I have not told anyone. Before he left he asked me to draw something small on the lining, where no one will see it but the man himself. I drew a cross the size of a fingernail in tailor's chalk, then pricked it through with a pin so it would hold. It will fade in a year, he says, and he is happy with that. Some things are only meant for the morning they are made.

Come on Saturday. Bring the good scissors, the ones you hid from me in 1998, and we will see if the stripes still know their way home.

Love, Aunt Rose