Two people seen from behind: one has the word DUDE in black lettering on the upper back, the other has sweet in black script above a colour lily tattoo on the shoulder blade.

Dude and sweet lettering with a lily on two backs

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

Two people stand back to back, showing the word DUDE in bold black blackletter-style lettering across one upper back and the word sweet in black script on the other. The second person also has a lily with green leaves and pale pink petals on the shoulder blade, shaded in soft tones. The photograph is a close, slightly soft crop with warm indoor lighting and a dark top and bra straps in the foreground.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Closing time at the shop was twenty past nine, which is why I still don't understand how Marnie and Tess got past the shutter. They came in out of the rain arguing about a single word. Tess wanted sweet, the way her nan said it about a cup of tea. Marnie wanted dude, because it was what their dad called them both, usually when something had got broken.

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I drew the letters myself. Blackletter for Dude, because Marnie said she wanted something that would frighten a bus driver. Tess wanted a looping script, the kind that looks like it was written by someone who meant it. I did the lily last, on the back of a receipt while the kettle went, because Tess said she'd always wanted something that stayed open after dark. Her mum grew them in a pot by the back door in Holbeck.

They stood back to back under my lamp to check the placement, and neither of them spoke for a while. Then Marnie laughed so hard she had to sit on the stool, and Tess said the two words read sweet dude when you stood like that, which was exactly what their dad would have said about the pair of them. I stopped pretending to wipe down the needles.

I charged them forty pounds for the lily and nothing for the words, which Marnie said was the only fair deal in Leeds. Three weeks later Tess sent me a photo taken outside the bus station, the two of them back to back under a streetlight, the sentence finally whole. I've never told anyone that I still keep the receipt with the lily sketched on it, pinned above the sink.

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