Two small black fine line tattoos on the inner wrists, a letter X on the left wrist and a circle O on the right wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small X and O tattoos on two wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are shown against a plain pale background, one clenched in a fist and the other open with the palm turned outwards. A small letter X sits on the inside of the left wrist and a small open circle sits on the inside of the right wrist. Both marks are thin, single-line black ink with no shading, and the simple composition keeps the two tattoos as the focal point.

Fine line Forearm Circle Wrist Minimal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top had lost its second pole in the Lincolnshire gale, and by the time the canvas was patched with feed sacks the crowds had stopped coming to see anything but the rain. Tobias Carrow kept the ledger and his sister Nell kept the horses, and between them they kept the show alive on fried bread and promises.

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Nell's friend Mae walked the wire. Each night she stepped out above the sawdust with nothing under her but the drum roll and the cold. One wet autumn, when the wages were three weeks owed, Mae took a pen from Tobias's coat and drew a small cross on the inside of her left wrist. Nell asked what it was for. Mae said it was for the nights they would not go hungry, and that the other half of the bargain was a ring on the right wrist, drawn by whoever stayed behind.

Nell drew the ring with a sewing needle and ink from the ringmaster's pot. It took her an hour, and the circle came out lopsided, but Mae said it would hold. They played noughts and crosses on the wagon steps after that, and whoever lost bought the tea.

The show folded in the spring. Tobias sold the horses to a farm near Boston, and Mae took a job rigging lights in a theatre in Leeds. Years later, when Nell was old and the canvas had rotted to nothing, a girl came to the empty field asking about the marks. Nell told her the trick was never the wire. It was knowing which hand to hold up when the drum stopped.