Two small black cross-like tattoos sit on the fingers of two clasped hands, one on each hand.

Small cross tattoos on fingers

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two clasped hands show a small black mark on one finger of each hand. Each mark is a simple cross made of two or three thin strokes, with the lines appearing slightly uneven, as if drawn freehand. The ink is black against a neutral, slightly cool-toned photo with red and grey nail polish visible.

Hand Cross Symbol Finger Hand

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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 closer, mind the lamp, the oil's older than your grandmother. You want to know about the crosses. Everybody wants the crosses. Long after the Severn ran backwards and swallowed Gloucester, there was a ferrywoman called Oona Brisk who worked the flooded stretch between the two church spires. Nobody could read a map by then, so the crossings were marked by hand. Where the water ran shallow over gravel you drew a cross on the post, and where it ran deep you drew a line through the cross.

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Oona had a nephew, Ewan Pell, who could not keep still and could not keep quiet. The summer he turned twelve he wanted to be trusted with the oar, and she told him no. He went off and inked a cross on his own finger, a small freehand thing with the lines not quite straight, and announced that was his crossing mark now. She could not argue with a boy who had put his trade on his own skin.

The fog came in the autumn. Three barges were out past the spires, and the only thing the river had left to guide them was the posts. Oona, bad knees and all, took the boat out with Ewan at the bow, reading the crosses by lantern and calling each one back to her. He called every one. She steered on his voice. Every mark was true and every one was a little shaky, because his hand was shaking, and she loved that more than any straight line in the valley.

They brought all three barges home. Ewan kept his mark until he was old, and when he held his own grandchild's hand across the water, he pressed the two fingers together so the crosses met. That is how you know a crossing is safe. Now, the lamp. Mind it. Go on home.