Black Greek script lettering tattooed diagonally across the back of a hand near the wrist.

Greek script lettering on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a diagonal word in black Greek-style lettering on the back of a hand, running from near the wrist toward the knuckles. The letters are solid, even black ink with clean, simple outlines and no shading. The pale skin and soft background keep the focus on the text, with the frame cropped tightly around the hand.

Lettering Hand Lettering Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the word for hawk before you learn the word for passport. Your grandfather says it at the kitchen table, tapping it into the oilcloth with one finger: little hawk, the one that hangs over the stubble fields below the bridge and drops like a stone thrown underarm. He says it is what the village boys called you when you were small and quick and always up on the wall, daring the dogs.

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Now you stand at the crossing with the river loud below and a line of lorries breathing diesel behind you. The officer at the window has a bored face and a stamp in his fist. He turns your papers over, holds the photograph up against your face, and asks where you were born. You tell him the village, the bridge, the field where the hawk used to hang. He does not look up. Shepherds, grandmothers and lorry drivers have all told him somewhere on their way through.

Then he slides the glass open a finger's width and says something you did not expect, in the old dialect, the one only your grandfather still used at the table. Nobody on this side of the water has spoken it aloud in years. You answer without thinking, and the stamp comes down with a clean, flat sound.

Walking through, you feel the word settle on you like a perch. Beyond the barrier the road opens onto a country you have never seen, all wire fences and low grey light, and you understand that the bird never needed a map.