Thin black script tattoo reading Believe on the inner wrist, shown beside ripped blue denim.

Believe script on the inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the inner wrist and forearm with the single word Believe written in flowing cursive script. The linework is fine and even, and the ink appears dark blue-black with no visible colour. The word sits diagonally across the wrist against a plain background of denim and a dark seat.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Believe Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sea had been grey for eleven days, and the boy had stopped asking when they would see land. Mr Harrow found him at the rail of the Marigold, knuckles white, watching the wake fold itself back into the swell. He said nothing at first. He took the chalk from his waistcoat pocket and drew a long looping hook on the scrubbed timber beside the boy's hand, a line that trailed off like a sail catching wind.

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'What's that say?' the boy asked. 'Believe,' Harrow said, and ran his thumb along the last curl of the e. 'My mother wrote it in the front of my Bible when I first went to sea. Said I'd need it more than the biscuits.' The boy scowled at the word the way boys scowl at spelling. 'Believe what?' 'Whatever keeps you on deck in the morning.'

They worked the pump together that forenoon, and the chalk smeared a little with spray and sweat. By the next watch the word was half gone, only the B and the tail of the final e still showing. The boy went below for the cook's ink pot and came back with his sleeve rolled and his tongue between his teeth. He traced the script over the chalk in careful strokes, slow as a boy learning his letters all over again.

Three days later a gull landed on the foremast, and the cry came down from the crow's nest: land, a smudge of green off the larboard bow. The boy did not look at the shore first. He looked at the bulkhead, where the dark word still ran diagonally across the wood, and he grinned as though he had won a bet with himself.