Black ink linework symbol with two spirals and a central loop, tattooed on the inner wrist of a light-skinned arm.

Spiral and loop symbol on a wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A fine-to-medium black linework symbol sits on the inner wrist, made of two spirals joined by a central looped stroke. The lines are solid and even, with the ink fully black and no shading or colour. The tattoo is centred on the wrist, shown against a black and white printed background with painted nails in glitter teal.

Forearm Spiral Loop Symbol Linework

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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

Right, sit down by the stove where the crabs can't reach you, and I'll tell it the way my grandmother told it to me, with the wind knocking at the shutters to keep time.

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There was a rope-walk at the bottom of Porthkerran, where Old Jory Penhale laid up cordage for every boat in the bay. He had a habit nobody liked. Before he sent a line out he'd take the end in his teeth, run it round his palm twice and tie a loop, then let the tail curl back on itself in two round coils, the way a fern comes up in spring. The fishermen called it Jory's mark and said it was for luck. He said it was for directions.

Then came the autumn the Morwenna went out and didn't come back in. His grandson Tam was aboard. Jory sat on the harbour wall every evening with a coil of spare line across his knees. Nobody ever saw him weep. What they saw was him unpicking a fresh length, chalking the loop again, and hauling it tight until the coils lay flat as pennies.

The turn came in February, when a chandler's boy ran up the hill shouting that a boat was off the point with its sail stitched in patches. It was not the Morwenna. It was a stranger, two men and a wet dog, who had drifted three days and wanted only water. When Jory came down to the quay he found his own knot on their mooring line, the loop turned towards the sea. The men said they had cut their old rope on the rocks, and only that one had held. Jory looked at it a long time, then went back up the hill to begin again.