Fine line black script lettering and a small outlined triangle tattoo on a person's forearms, with both palms held up towards the camera.

Script lettering and a triangle on both forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown with the palms held together and turned upwards, with a white striped shirt in the background. The forearms carry fine line black script lettering, including a phrase reading to create is to destroy, a word written upside down on the right wrist, and a small outlined triangle on the left arm. The image is cropped and softly lit, with the ink appearing in black and grey tones against the skin.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Quote Triangle Wrist Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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You will not believe what Dad did to the stern before he went. I came back from Braunston with the diesel and found him on the cabin step with a tin of white gloss and a brush he had no business holding, painting over the old name so the letters came out the wrong way round. From the towpath, he said, it would read true. I told him nobody reads a boat from the towpath. They read it from the lock, and he laughed until he had to sit down.

Then there's the chalk. On the lock beam at Stoke Bruerne someone has drawn a little triangle, point up, the same size as the one he scratched above the stove. He wouldn't say what it meant. He only kept saying the line he'd copied from the back of a museum postcard: to create is to destroy. He said it like a man trying out a new coat.

The trouble is the boat's sold. A couple from Leeds want it to look like a catalogue. They've asked me to scrub the stove and the words both. I said I'd try, but I've been sat on the roof with the paraffin rag for an hour and I can't make myself lift it off the wood.

Anyway. The Leeds people come Saturday. If you can get the early train, bring the brass key and the scraper, and we'll do the lock gate together before the light goes.

Love, Maddie