Close-up of a white ink tattoo of the word Believe in flowing script with swirled flourishes on a forearm.

Believe script with swirls on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells the word Believe in a looping script with swirled flourishes extending below the letters and at the ends of the word. It is rendered in pale white ink that appears as a raised, light outline against the skin, with no shading. The word fills most of the frame on a plain, lightly lit background of skin.

Lettering Forearm Believe Script Word Swirl Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The window on Lantern Row had been lettered three times before Mrs Dacre came to me, and each time the gold leaf had lifted by the first frost. I told her white enamel would outlast it. She laughed and said she'd heard that about most things in Carrick, then sat on the stool by my trestle and watched me rule guidelines with a pencil and a bent steel rule.

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The word she wanted was Believe, with the capital B looping like a ribbon caught on a nail. I drew it four times on tracing paper before she was satisfied. The swirls were the hard part. They had to trail below the baseline and curl at the ends like kite tails, each one matching the last, or the whole thing sat crooked on the glass. She told me her son had taken the ferry across the river the spring the water came over the banks, and that the café had been his idea. I didn't ask more. I kept my hand steady.

Two days later I came back to check the paint had set. The low sun was coming off the water and through the glass, so the letters caught the light from inside and stood clear against the dim shop. From the street they read backwards. Only from the footbridge, where the customs officers stood between shifts, could you read them true, and I knew that was where she'd want them seen from.

Mrs Dacre came out with two cups of tea and stood beside me without speaking. Then she tapped the glass once, just under the B, and said the enamel had gone on thicker than she expected. It had. I had pressed hard on the downstrokes out of nerves, and the white stood proud of the pane like something raised by hand. I told her paint you could feel with a fingertip would last a good long while. She said that would do.