Black ink tattoo across the upper back spelling COEXIST, where each letter is replaced by a religious or peace symbol, including a crescent and star, a peace sign, e=mc2, a Star of David, an eye, a

Coexist lettering tattoo across the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells the word coexist across the upper back, with each letter replaced by a symbol: a crescent and star, a peace sign, the formula e=mc2, a Star of David, an eye above the i, a yin yang and a cross. The linework is bold and solid with flat black fill and no visible shading, and the design is shown in black ink on pale skin against a dark background.

Back Crescent Star Peace sign Eye Yin yang Cross Symbol Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fascia board above the Blue Kettle had been bare for six weeks because nobody on Harrow Lane could agree on the letters. Mr Aziz wanted his crescent over the C, the Reverend Hollis wanted a cross at the end, and the lad from the chip shop next door asked, very politely, whether the peace sign could go where the O was supposed to be. Maud Carrow, who had painted signs in the town since her husband's funeral, listened to all of it from the top of her stepladder and said nothing until the tea was poured.

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'Put them in the order they came in,' she said. 'The word doesn't mind who draws what, so long as everyone has to stand under it to read it.' She sketched the eight letters on lining paper, one symbol to each, and the arguments moved from the pavement to the back room where the paint tins lived. The physics teacher from the sixth form spent an afternoon working out how small the equation could be and still be legible from a bus. The woman from the mosque brought a star she had cut from brass and asked Maud to paint it rather than glue it, because brass, she said, was too loud.

On the last morning the board went up, Maud found the eye had been set above the wrong side of the i. Nobody had noticed except her. She could have fixed it in ten minutes with a fine brush and a steady hand. Instead she sat on the bottom rung and looked at it for a long while, the crescent and the cross facing the same way across the sign, and decided the lane could live with it crooked for a day before anyone asked her to straighten it.

By noon the bus had stopped twice so people could photograph it. The Reverend was taking a picture for his newsletter with the chip-shop lad in the frame, both of them squinting up at the word as if it might still change its mind.