Fine line black script tattoo reading courage across an ankle, with a second bare foot resting against it on a white background.

Courage script on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet are pictured against a plain white background, one crossing over the other. A small word, courage, is written in a flowing cursive script across the ankle of the upper foot. The linework is thin and even in black ink, with no shading or colour, and the lettering sits off-centre in the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ankle Courage Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Edie had given up on the greenhouse by March, but the copperplate book still sat on the potting bench under a jar of nails. Every Saturday her grandson Tom came down the garden path with his tongue between his teeth, and every Saturday she set him a word to join up. Last week it had been "marrow". This week she had written the word in her own looping hand across the top of a page, the loops tall and leaning like runners on a fence.

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He wanted to know why she didn't use a printed sheet like the school did. She told him the pencil would get tired before the word did. He copied it slowly, ink smearing where his wrist dragged across the paper, and a grey thumbprint appeared in the margin. Beyond the fence the neighbours' sprinkler ticked over the lawn, and a blackbird worked the bean rows as if it had been hired for the job.

When he reached the last letters he stopped. "It's a long one," he said. "Courage." She nodded and told him about the summer her father built the hen coop, how he had dropped the hammer on his own foot and then kept nailing, straight-backed, with his boot unlaced. Tom looked at the lettering as if it might slide off the page. Maybe a word could carry that much, she thought.

He tried the final stroke again, a swoop off the g, and this time it came out right. She didn't say so. She tore the page from the book, folded it twice, and tucked it into his coat pocket, where it would turn up in the wash weeks later, soft as cloth and still legible.