Fine line black tattoo of two hands clasped together on the forearm, with sketchy broken outlines and small dots of shading.

Two hands clasped on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two hands clasping or holding each other, drawn as loose, broken black outlines with a few dots and small patches of shading. The linework is thin and sketchy, with some lines fading out and overlapping, which gives the hands an unfinished, drawn quality. The design is in black ink only and sits on the forearm against a plain skin tone and a dark background.

Fine line Forearm Hand Clasped hands Holding hands

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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

Dear Tomasz, the rain has been coming sideways down Market Street since Tuesday and the cod is going soft on the ice faster than I can shift it, so forgive the smudges. Mum says you'll be home by spring, but Mum also said that the spring before last.

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Your old pitch by the clock tower belongs to a lad selling phone cases now. He asked after you and thought you'd gone to Rotterdam. I said you'd gone wherever a man goes when he thinks a handshake is a promise. He didn't laugh. Nobody laughs under a tarpaulin in weather like this, and he went back to counting his cases.

I still do the coins the way we used to, palm to palm across the till, fingers hooked so neither of us dropped the change. Last Thursday a woman bought two haddock and held my hand a second too long while she counted out the pennies, and I nearly asked her to let go. Silly. Her hand was warm and it wasn't yours, and I had to look at the scales for a while.

I drew us on the back of a delivery note last night, two hands in biro, your knuckles and my thumb. The paper went damp on the windowsill and the lines softened, the way edges do when they're left out in the wet. I went over them again, and again, trying to keep the grip tight. Come home before the lines give out completely, love. Nan's mac is still on the hook by the door. It's yours if you want it.