Black fine line script tattoo running across an upper arm, ending with an Om symbol.

Devanagari-style script line along the upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single line of black script runs across the upper arm of a person with long blonde hair, whose face is not shown. The thin, even linework appears to be a Devanagari-style script, ending with an Om symbol. The soft, slightly grainy close-up shows skin, a white top and a grey surface behind the arm.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Script Om symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Dad, it's gone half two and the street outside the print shop has finally gone quiet, so I'm writing this on the back of a spoiled proof with the lamp pulled low over the bench. The gold leaf is drying on the window of the Chinese takeaway on Stokes Croft, and I have until seven before the owner comes in to see it. I got the letters right, mostly. The hooked stroke at the start of the second word kept wanting to lean, the way your hand always did when you were tired and pretending you weren't.

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You taught me on the kitchen table in Leith with a carpenter's pencil and the back of a gas bill. You said every line needs a place to stop, so you always finished with that small curl at the end, like a snail shell or a question you've decided not to ask. I thought it was showing off. I didn't understand until I was sixteen and copying your lettering off the cupboard door for a school project, and you came in and saw I'd got the curl exactly right and went out to the garden without a word.

I haven't rung you since the funeral of your sister, and I know that's on me as much as you. But Mrs Okafor came in on Tuesday with a photograph of a page from her grandmother's prayer book and asked if I could paint a line like it across her shop front. I said I could try. Then I sat here for an hour with your old pencil, tracing the shapes until my wrist ached, and I finally understood that the curl was never decoration. It was the bit you added so the rest of it had somewhere to rest.

I'm going to leave the loop unfinished on the glass in the morning. Mrs Okafor says that's fine, that people will stop and wonder what it says, and that's the point of a sign. If you ever want to come and read it, I'll be here until six. If not, I'll hear the kettle click on in the back room and know it's you who's been putting the milk in first all these years. Love, Nell