Black and grey realism tattoo across a man's upper back showing the word Amendment in flowing script, two engraved handguns and a quotation beneath, viewed from behind.

Amendment lettering and two handguns on back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large back piece shows the word Amendment in ornate flowing script above two pistols with detailed engraved slides and grips. A block of italic calligraphy below quotes text about a well regulated militia, and the design is set on bare skin with a sleeve tattoo visible on the left arm. The work is in black and grey with smooth shading on the guns and crisp, bold lettering.

Lettering Realism Back Script Pistol Filigree Ornament Calligraphy

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Hollis wanted the pair matched, and by the third week Ada had decided that matching was the hardest thing anyone had ever asked of her. Two pistols of a plain army pattern lay on the bench under the north window, their slides still dull with the blue from the forge. Each needed scroll cut into the flats with a graver no thicker than a darning needle, acanthus leaves curling out from a central cartouche, and each side had to answer the other like a reflection in still water.

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Her father had taught her the trick, though he never called it a trick. You worked both pieces at once, turning them under the lamp so the light struck them at the same angle, and you let your hand forget which was left and which was right. By midnight the first gun carried eleven curls on its grip panel. The second carried eleven too. Ada rubbed oil into the cuts with her thumb and held them up to the window, and for the first time in weeks she could not find the seam.

She signed the work the way her father had, with a wren no bigger than a grain of rice tucked into a leaf on the underside of the second grip, where only someone turning the gun over would ever find it. When Mr Hollis came on Saturday he laid the pistols side by side on the counter, pushed their muzzles together until the scrollwork met, and frowned at the gap. Then he turned the second one over, found the bird, and said nothing at all. He paid what they had agreed and a little more, and tucked the pair into a felt-lined case.