Black blackletter script tattoo reading Family across the outer forearm, with a swash on the F and the Y.

Family blackletter lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo spells the word Family in bold blackletter script in solid black ink across the forearm. The letters have sharp, angular strokes with decorative flourishes on the F and the Y, and the lettering runs diagonally upward from left to right. The skin is lit evenly against a red and dark plaid fabric background.

Lettering Forearm Family Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had not lifted off the yard by seven, so I mixed the black enamel in the cart shed with my fingers wrapped round the tin. Old Walter Pryce wanted the word on the barn door before his family came up from Leeds for Christmas, and he wanted it in the old hand, the one his mother had used on the feed bins in 1952. 'Not modern,' he said, leaning on his stick. 'Proper letters, the kind that look like they mean it.'

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I drew it out in chalk first. The F took the longest, because Walter would not have the top loop cut short, and I kept sweeping the brush back until the tail curled like a fern gone to seed. The a and the m I did with sharp corners, the way the old bins had them, and I stood back to check the slant ran up from left to right. He watched every stroke from the mounting block, and when I reached the Y he told me to stop.

'Leave the last one for Ruth,' he said. Ruth was his daughter, the one who had not spoken to him since the sale of the top field. I asked what he meant. He said she would come up for the sheep count and see the empty space and know it was hers to fill. So I left the Y as a bare chalk outline, waiting, and cleared my brushes while the light went grey over the byre roof.

Two days later a grey hatchback pulled into the yard, and a woman in a green coat walked straight to the door without looking at me. She stood in front of the chalk for a long time. Then she took the brush from my hand, dipped it in the tin, and finished the letter herself, the flourish sweeping down past the edge of the board. Walter watched from the kitchen window with his hand flat on the glass.