Black script monogram of two interlocking letters with curling flourishes, tattooed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Interlocking script monogram on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black monogram of two interlocking letters sits on the upper back, close to the shoulder blade. The letters are drawn in smooth, sweeping script lines with curled flourishes and solid black fill, with some soft grey shading inside the strokes. The design is centred on a plain patch of skin, with the shoulder edge visible at the right.

Lettering Back Monogram Letter Initial Script Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brief came with two names scrawled on a beer mat, Bertram Holt and Ruth Calloway, and a demand that neither of them should be able to read the sign without seeing the other. Ada had painted monograms before, on hearses and tea urns, but never for a bakery whose owners had not spoken since the spring. She sat at the bench with tracing paper and drew the B first, fat and upright, then the R, and tried to find a route for the pen that would pass through both.

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It took her three nights. The trick, she found, was the tail. A sign-writer's flourish is a promise that the hand never lifted, so she let the lower loop of the B run out into a long hook and curled the R's leg back under it, so the two letters held each other at the waist like dancers who had forgotten their steps. She laid the design on the fascia in gold leaf, then went over it in black enamel, working from a plank on ropes that swung over Preston Street in the wind.

When the shopfront was finished, Bertram came up the pavement with his hat in his hand and stood a long time with his head tilted. Ruth came out from behind the counter, flour to the elbows, and stood beside him. Neither spoke. Then Bertram said the B had always been the better letter, and Ruth said the R was the one people remembered, and they both laughed and went inside together to argue about the rest of the sign.

Ada climbed down last, pocketing her brushes. Looking up, she saw what the afternoon sun did to the hook of the B, throwing its shadow across the bowl of the R, so that for an hour each day the letters seemed to lean in to read one another.