Black and grey fine line tattoo of the Latin phrase carpe diem in script across the inner wrist and forearm.

Carpe diem script on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A greyscale close-up of a fine line script tattoo reading carpe diem, running horizontally across the inner wrist. The linework is thin and even, with a slight tapered flow in the letterforms and a connecting stroke between the two words. The soft focus and plain background keep attention on the single black line.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Carpe diem Latin phrase Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The ink ran dry three days out of Valparaíso, so this is in pencil, and you will have to forgive the smudges where my thumb has rested on the wet part of the page. Cook has been saying the Latin over breakfast to anyone who will sit still. Carpe diem, he says, and then hands round the burnt biscuits as if the day were something you could pinch off the bread.

I have been thinking about Mr Ashby, who copied the phrase onto the flyleaf of his Horace in a hand so fine you had to tilt the page to the lamp. Nobody aboard could read it until the second mate translated, and Ashby only laughed and said the day was never the hard part. It was the sort of man who said it. He went over the side off the Horn with the words still faint on his wrist, the only place he ever kept anything he meant to keep.

We raise the Falklands on Thursday if the glass holds. I mean to go ashore with my pay and buy you a proper pen, the kind with a nib that doesn't skip across the paper. Meanwhile I have started a line of my own each morning, nothing grand, only the weather and whatever the gulls got up to, so that when I see you there will be a whole coil of days to read through.

Tell Mother the ship is sound and the cook is a fool, but a fool who knows his Latin.

Yours, Tom