Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo of the word purpose on the inside of a forearm, with a red and black checked shirt in the background.

Fine line script 'purpose' on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single word, purpose, is written in thin, flowing cursive across the inner forearm, close to the wrist. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black. The photograph is tightly framed on the arm, with the checked shirt and grey top softly out of focus behind it.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Word Script

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ladder is still leaning against the Bramley where your uncle left it in August, so you climb it while the wasps haven't found the windfalls yet. Below, the orchard runs down to the brook in rows nobody has straightened since your grandmother stopped walking them. The air smells of bruised fruit and cut grass, and the light lies low and gold across the grass.

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In the potting shed the ledger sits open where she left it. Every tree has a name in her looping hand, and beside each name a line about what it was for. Cox's Orange Pippin, for the school fete. Egremont Russet, for the man who taught her to graft. The last entry, dated the week before she went into hospital, is one word written small in the margin: purpose. You read it three times, the way she used to read the sky before rain.

You thought it was a note about the stock, a reminder to keep the rootstock clean. But the entry sits beside a tree that has no label, a young stem growing crooked by the wall. When you cut a scion from it and bind it to the old Bramley stock with raffia, the join takes. Ten days later a green bud swells where there should be nothing, and you tie a paper tag to it and copy the word out in pencil, not yet sure whether she meant the tree or you.

By March the bud has opened into a leaf with a crease down its middle. You carry the ledger out into the drizzle, write the date beside the new growth, and press so hard the nib catches the paper. Then you leave the word in the margin where she put it.