Black script lettering tattoo running along the outer forearm, with thick strokes and sharp, tapered ends.

Black script tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a black script tattoo across the forearm, with bold, flowing strokes that taper into pointed terminals at the right. The ink is solid black with soft grey shading along the edges, and the skin around it shows some redness. The background is a plain, out-of-focus fabric, and the tattoo fills the centre of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink in my pen gave out halfway through the word for light, so I finished the rest in pencil and hope you will forgive the grey. Out here the lamp turns every fifteen seconds and I have stopped counting the turns. Mr Hollis from the mainland boat left a tin of paraffin and a newspaper three weeks old, and I have read its shipping notices twice over like scripture. The sea has been taking the lower steps of the landing. I wrote to the Trinity House office about it, and they wrote back that the rock is my concern.

Keep reading

Last night a schooner came in close enough that I could read her name in the sweep of the beam, and I thought of how you used to trace my letters on your palm when we were boys, the loops and tails, teaching me to write with my whole arm. You said a good hand should look like it was running from something. I think of that every time I bend over the ledger and my strokes come out sharp at the end, like they are trying to leave the page.

The fog came back at dusk. I wound the clock, trimmed the wick and sat with the pen over the paper until the beam swung round and found the water again. Nothing has come in from the south for a week, so the boat will likely bring post on Thursday, if the swell lets it near.

I am sending this with that boat. Keep the pencil mark where I stopped, it means I was still writing when the light came round.

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