Black fine line tattoo of a symbol with two spirals and crossing loops, placed at the centre of the back of the neck.

Spiral and loop symbol on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of a symbol made from two spiral ends joined by a looped, figure-of-eight style curve crossed by a diagonal stroke. The linework is smooth and even with a consistent line weight and no shading. The tattoo sits centrally on the back of a pale neck, with dark hair above and a blurred background to the right.

Fine line Neck Spiral Loop Symbol Linework Infinity

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Adwoa had sold thread at the Thursday market for forty years, and when the rain came in off the estuary it drove everyone under the iron roof except her. She sat on her upturned crate with a basket of wound cord across her knees and let the water run off her headscarf.

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A boy called Kofi came by with his coins wet in his fist. He wanted to know why the cord at the bottom of her basket had no price on it. She told him her grandmother had spun it, and that it was sold only to people who would walk it back to her before the lamps were lit. He laughed and asked what would happen if he kept it. She said the spiral would follow him home, and he would have to see it through.

He paid two coins anyway and tied the cord round his wrist. He walked down to the harbour, then past the fish sheds, then to his aunt's yard, keeping the loop open as he went. Each time he turned, the spiral at the far end drew him gently round, as if a hand were at the other end of it. By dusk he had gone in a wide circle and come back under the iron roof, dripping, in front of her stall.

Mother Adwoa took the cord from his wrist, pressed its two ends together and gave it back to him. "Now it is only thread," she said, and turned to count the rain on the tin.