Black ink tattoo of a mathematical equation with a cube root, set in a fine, handwritten style on the lower back, with white lace fabric above it.

Algebraic equation tattoo on skin

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a single line of a mathematical equation: x squared plus a bracketed term containing y minus a cube root of x squared, all squared, equals 1. The lettering and symbols are drawn in thin black linework with a slightly uneven, hand-written quality. The ink is set against pale skin, with a white lace edge across the top of the frame and a pink fabric edge along the bottom.

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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

The slate in the net loft has been wiped so many times that the chalk only lives in its grooves now, but you can still read the heart in it if you tilt your head towards the window. Your father drew it the summer the Marigold came back without her skipper. He said a curve that clean could only be made by someone who had decided to be sorry in a precise way.

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You were nine and did not want the sum. You wanted the boat. He worked it out anyway on the back of a tide table: square the x, take the cube root of x squared, subtract that from y, square the whole bracket, and the thing closed up into a shape like a valentine that had been to sea. "Anything that stays inside the line is home," he said. "Anything outside, the harbour master writes down."

Years later the harbour master's ledger came to you in a damp envelope, and the figures in it were wrong in exactly the places your father had been right. You sat in the net loft with the slate and a bottle of gin and drew the curve again, shakily, the way he had, closing it at the top where the wind had got in.

The Marigold came in on the morning tide with her wheelhouse lamp still burning. Her new skipper, a man you had once refused to dance with, stood on the quay and looked at the drawing you held out to him. He did not ask what it meant. He only checked the lines against the water, nodded once, and stepped aboard.