Close-up of a small thin black open-circle tattoo on the inner wrist, shown with the hand open, in a fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small open circle on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black outline of a circle, drawn with a thin, even line and left slightly open at one side, sits on the inner wrist. The skin around it is lightly reddened, and the hand is held open towards the top of the frame. The photograph is taken against pale blue draped fabric, with the ink shown in black with no colour.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Circle Ring Outline

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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 ring on the lock side at Hanwell had been bent open years before I came along, and nobody on the cut could say who did it. Dad called it the lazy ring, because a man could drop a bow line through the gap without climbing up to the bollard. I was nine that spring and thought the gap was the cleverest thing in England.

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We went down the flight in the wet, Mum working the paddles, me on the bow with the rope coiled over one shoulder. The water in the chamber boiled up grey and cold, and the boat sank until the brick walls stood higher than our roof. Every time the gate groaned I counted the iron rungs of the ladder to see how far the sky had shrunk.

At the bottom a lock keeper called Pell came down the towpath with a face like a cracked jug. He took my rope, looked through the open ring for a long while, and said that a thing left open could still hold a boat if you knew which way to pull. Then he showed me, one hand over the other, and the knot bit and held.

Years later, on a canal I had never been down, I dropped a bow line through a ring someone had left unfinished and felt Pell's hands in mine again. The boat swung in against the brickwork and stopped, exactly where I wanted it.