Black ink cross above the script words Psalm 46:5 on a forearm, covered by clear plastic wrap.

Cross and Psalm 46:5 script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink cross sits above the words Psalm 46:5 written in a flowing script across the inner forearm. The lines are bold for the cross and thinner, rounded strokes for the lettering, all in solid black ink. The forearm is covered in clear plastic wrap, which suggests the tattoo is fresh, and the skin is shown against a dark background.

Lettering Forearm Cross Psalm Script Text Bible verse

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The relief boat was due at six, and by seven it was still a grey smudge beyond Skerrow Point. I stood on the gallery with the lens still ticking as it cooled and counted gulls on the landing stage, because counting is what a keeper does when nothing else will hold still. Forty-one, then forty-three. The tide was making over the causeway and the wind had gone round to the north-east in the night, the kind of wind that finds the gap under a door.

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Ansel Rooke had cut the verse into the lintel stone above the store room door the year before the light was electrified, and he had said it to me every time we lost a morning like this. He was a man who believed in the old translation and not much else. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. I used to think the early part was the point, that help was only worth something if it arrived before you had given up on it.

The storm had come through at two in the morning and I had kept the lamp turning all of it, feeding the clockwork weights by torch while a coaster's mate on the radio asked whether we were still showing. We were. At four a crack ran across the glass of the eastern panel and I sat with my back to the stair and my hands flat on the floor until the shuddering stopped. Nobody came out to us in the dark. Nobody was going to.

When the relief boat finally nosed into the lee at half past eight, the young lad aboard looked up at the stone above the door and asked what it meant. I told him it was a promise, and that the trick was to keep the light on until it kept its word. He squinted at the sun coming up over the mainland as if someone had arranged it for his benefit.