Black line drawing of the words you are my anchor in handwritten lettering, above an anchor whose shank forms a heart, suitable as a lettering and anchor tattoo design.

You are my anchor lettering with anchor and heart

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn black line design showing the handwritten phrase "you are my anchor" with "you" underlined. Below the text, an anchor has a looped ring at the top and a crossbar, and its central shank forms a heart shape. The curved arms end in arrowheads on a plain white background.

Lettering Anchor Heart Lettering Text Arrow

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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

Mind the third step, it's worn through where a century of boots have climbed it. Sit down, love, and get your breath back before the stairs take it off you. Ruth Pendry kept the Scarrow light the winter her husband's boat went out past the bar and never came home. She did not once go down to the quay to watch for it. She climbed up here instead and trimmed the wick every evening, because the sea doesn't care who's waiting on the shore.

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Tom had carved an anchor into the lamp-room sill the summer they married, with a heart shaped into its shank and a crooked ring on top. Beneath it he'd scratched the words, you are my anchor, and when Ruth asked why he'd wasted a good knife on a bit of wood, he said a woman who married a fisherman should know what she was holding on to. She laughed at him. She didn't laugh the night the south-westerly came in off the Atlantic like a train, and the lamp began to gutter.

She had the oil can in one hand and the matches in her teeth, and every ship out there was counting on that light to tell them where the rocks were. Her arms were shaking so badly she dropped a match twice. Then she put her palm flat against the sill where the carving was, the way you'd steady a horse, and found the wick again. The beam swung out across the water, steady as anything. Next morning the Mary Jane limped in with her crew all alive, and not one of them had seen Tom among the wreckage.

But his old anchor was found on the shingle below the tower, its heart-shaped shank still bright where the sea had worn it. Ruth had it hauled up and hung it from the gallery rail, where it still turns in the wind. I keep the shutter cracked on that side so the light catches it. Some nights you can see the shadow swing across the glass, and I like to think it's him, checking the channel is clear.