Two raised wrists show small black fine line tattoos, an X on the left wrist and an O on the right, both on the inner wrist.

Small X and O tattoos on wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two pairs of hands are raised against a white background, with the wrists turned towards the camera. A small black letter X sits on the left wrist and a small black circle, the letter O, sits on the right wrist. The thin, even linework is crisp, the ink is solid black, and the wrists sit centrally in the frame with the black sleeves forming a dark base at the bottom.

Fine line Forearm Letter Circle Wrist Minimal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The telegram forms came in bundles of fifty, and Maud Pargeter had learnt to read the sign-off before the message itself. Most ended in a plain name. Some ended in a pencilled XO, slipped in by a nervous hand at the counter, and she tapped those out on the sounder with a little extra care, the way you might carry a brimming cup across a kitchen.

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Her brother Len had been posted to a destroyer out of Scapa since March, and his letters arrived with the folds worn soft. Their mother had taught them the old code when they were small, a kiss for X and a hug for O, though Len always swapped them round to be contrary. Maud had never sent him one. Telegrams cost sixpence a word, and nobody in the Pargeter family used more words than they needed.

On a wet Thursday the sounder chattered with a message for a Mrs Ada Crane in Gosport. Maud read it the way she read a thousand others: SHIP IN SAFE STOP. Then, after a space, a single X and a single O. She stood holding the flimsy while the queue shuffled and the clock above the door crept towards closing.

That evening she wrote a form of her own at the kitchen table, counted the words twice, and handed it across the counter at the Post Office in the morning. It read LEN STOP O X STOP MAUD. The clerk read it back without a flicker. Maud had sent the letters the wrong way round, the way Len liked them, so he would know it was her and not the Admiralty.