Back view of a person with a black cursive script tattoo reading violent delights have violent ends across the upper back.

Cursive quote across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person is seen from behind with dark hair pulled up, a thin chain necklace and a blurred cigarette at the left edge of the frame. A line of black cursive script runs across the upper back, reading violent delights have violent ends, with the letters in fine, flowing linework and soft shading. The composition is shallow and dark, with the tattoo as the clear focal point against bare skin.

Lettering Back Script Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways across Greyle Street Market since eight, and by ten the tarpaulin over your trestle sags like a wet sail. You keep the paperbacks in plastic sleeves, the Penguins on the left and the foxed hardbacks under the card table, and you sell them for pennies to people who have forgotten they ever wanted to be sad about something good.

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A young man stops at the stall with his collar up and a folded page in his fist. He asks if you can write a line on the back of a postcard, in the loopy copperplate you use on the price tickets. He reads it off the page with his thumb under the words: these violent delights have violent ends. You ask who it's for. He says nobody, it's a joke for his brother, who has been reckless with his girlfriend and his car and his savings. You uncap the black ink and write it anyway, slowly, the nib catching on the damp card.

While the ink dries you open the battered Romeo and Juliet that came in with a box of bus timetables. The line is there on the page, and someone has pencilled in the margin, in a hand that leans hard to the right: and they both knew it. You read it twice, then close the book and slide it back under the table where the rain can't reach.

The young man takes the card without counting his change. Halfway down the street he stops under the awning of the chip shop and holds it up to the light. The water has already got to the top corner, so the first word bleeds into a grey smudge, and only the last word stays clear.