Close photo of the word delicate in black fine line script lettering on a person's hip, with white lace underwear visible above it.

Delicate script on a hip

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single word, delicate, is written in thin black cursive script on the side of a person's hip. The linework is even and fine, with no shading, and the lettering is set against warm, natural skin tones. The composition is a close crop with soft sunlight and a blurred green background.

Fine line Lettering Other Word Script Cursive

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hollis Quay had seven boats that year and only one of them came to my shed with a word I was nervous of painting. The owner of the Mary Ann Rook arrived with a scrap of paper in his fist, the word already written on it in pencil, pressed so hard the lead had gone shiny. Delicate, he said. Not Delight, not Dorothy, just that. I asked whether a boat called Delicate would frighten the crew. He said the crew were frightened already and it might as well be honest about it.

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I took the scrap home and practised the word on the back of a tide table until my wrist ached. The trick with a fine hand is to let the brush do the lifting, touch and go, so the loops stay open and the letters don't sit down heavy on the wood. I gave the d a long tail that curled back under the rest of the word, the way a line of cord curls off a cleat when nobody is pulling it.

The boat went out in February with the name on her stern in gold leaf and black outline, and came back in March with that same stern stove in against the breakwater. The crew walked off with their pay. Nobody drowned. When the owner came for the old board he ran his thumb along the tail of the d and said nothing at all for a long while.

He didn't ask for a new board. He asked me to paint the same word on a clean strip of pine for his kitchen wall, where he could read it over the kettle. I did it in one sitting, the d leaning out over the e like a gull on a rail. I still think it was the best letter I ever made, and he never once told me what he meant by it.