Red handwritten script reading I must not tell lies across the back of a fist, a fine line lettering tattoo on the hand.

Handwritten quote on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Colour · Photo

A fist is shown from the side, with the words I must not tell lies written in red handwritten script across the back of the hand, running from the knuckles towards the wrist. The linework is thin and uneven, with a slanted, casual letterform and a small arrow-like stroke at the start of the I. The background is white marble, and the red ink is the only strong colour in the frame.

Lettering Fine line Hand Quote Handwriting Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The red ink has dried to a crust in the pot, so you spit on the nib and work it with your thumb, the way your father does when the chart pen won't behave. Four lines are done. The fifth has to be neat enough for Mr Tregenza to read when he rows out on Thursday. Outside, the lamp swings its white arm across the water and back, and each sweep lights the kitchen wall like a slap.

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It started with the Mary Kell, a coaster caught on the Hogger Rocks in fog. You had seen her running lights through the murk and said nothing, not because you were frightened but because you had been reading a penny dreadful in the lamp room instead of watching the sea. When the rescue tender asked who had been on watch, you said your father, who was asleep in his chair with his boots on. Half the harbour thought he had been the one who missed her. He never once said otherwise, and that was the worst part.

Tonight he sits across from you at the table, mending a net with his big, patient hands, and does not look up. "Write it till it's yours," he says. "Then go up and tell the truth to the glass." So you wipe the nib, dip it again, and begin the sixth line, your red letters leaning like rain blown sideways.

The last thing you do is climb the iron stairs to the lamp room, where the mechanism hums warm and the lens throws its beam out over the black water. You say it aloud to the glass: the ship was there, and I looked away. The light carries it out past the Rocks, and the sea, which has heard worse, keeps its counsel.