Black and white photo of a shirtless man seen from behind, with a lettering tattoo reading london across his upper back and a floral tattoo at the edge of his left shoulder.

London script tattoo on a seated man's back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A man sits with his back to the camera on a wooden block, his black jacket pulled down around his waist. The word london is written in a loose script across his upper back, with a few small symbols below it and a partial floral design visible at the left shoulder. The photograph is in black and white against a plain grey backdrop, with strong studio lighting on the skin and jacket.

Lettering Back Shoulder Script Letter Flower Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Harrow Court has been broken since Tuesday, so you climb the eleven flights with the carrier bags cutting into your fingers, counting landings the way your nan used to count beads. On the fourth floor someone has scratched a name into the paint. On the seventh a child has drawn a sun with a worried face. You stop on nine to breathe and read the notice about the bins for the third time, and you think about the postcard in your coat pocket.

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It came from Mum, who went south twenty-odd years ago and has never once got your flat number right. Inside, in her looping hand, is a single line: Come and see the river, love. Your flat sits north of it, and the river has never been on your side of anything. You have been meaning to answer for three weeks. The card has gone soft from your thumb.

At the top, Dev is sitting on the stairwell with a tin of custard creams and a radio that crackles between stations. He asks what you're carrying. You tell him you're carrying a city. He laughs, then holds out his biro, and you turn the postcard over and let him write under the picture of a bridge. He does it in capitals that slope downhill like the stairs, one word, LONDON, and then a small star, the way you used to mark a bus ticket when you had decided to stay.

You take the last flight two at a time with the card flat against your chest. The bags have stopped hurting by the time you reach your door, and you are already working out what to write back.