Black and white photo of a person's bare back showing a crown above bold ASSHOLE lettering with cross motifs, plus traditional sleeve tattoos on the raised arms and a word on one hand.

Crown and lettering across a back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a bare back with the hair falling forward over the face, arms raised. A bold block-lettered word sits across the upper back beneath a crown, with cross motifs at each end, and the arms carry traditional-style tattoos including a heart and the number 88. The high-contrast monochrome shot is framed tightly on the shoulders and hands against a dark, graphic backdrop.

Traditional Lettering Back Upper arm Forearm Hand Crown Lettering Cross Heart Sleeve Hair

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways across the market since six, and by ten the awning over Stall 14 is sagging like a wet sail. You are on a stepladder with a tin of enamel and a brush you bought off a retired signwriter in Hull, painting the name back onto the board in black block capitals, the kind that reads from the far end of the road. Nobody asked for the crown. You added it at the top because the old board had one, faded to a ghost, and you couldn't bear to leave it bare.

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Mrs Okafor from the fish stall stops under your ladder with a paper cup of tea and watches the brush go round the second S. "Bold," she says. "Nobody trusts a shy sign."

You know what she means. Forty years the stall has sold secondhand tools, and nobody has ever bought a thing because the lettering was polite. The crosses at the corners are your father's, a habit from the pattern books he kept under the counter, little iron crosses to keep the bad luck off the stock. The heart you drew in the margin by accident and then left there.

By noon the paint is tacky and the sky has thinned to a grey strip over the bus station. You climb down, wipe your hands on the rag in your pocket, and step back into the crowd to look. The letters hold their ground against the weather. Mrs Okafor lifts her cup. Somewhere behind you a boy shouts a price, and the rain starts again, softly, as if it has only been waiting for you to finish.