Close view of a man's clasped hands showing black lettering tattoos on both forearms and fingers, plus a black-and-grey ornamental design on the right wrist.

Script lettering and ornament on forearms and hands

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are clasped at the waist, with a black bead bracelet and gold charm on the right wrist. The forearms carry black script lettering, and a small figurative ornament with more script sits on the right wrist. Lettering also runs along the fingers, and the image is in natural light against a denim jacket and white shirt.

Lettering Forearm Hand Lettering Script Ornament Clasped hands

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the ferry came in on Tuesday with the wrong sort of rain behind it, and Mrs Haig at the shop says the boat won't run again until the spring tide drops. I have hung your father's oilskin on the hook by the back door where the wind can't get at it. Don't write back about the oilskin. Write about the timetable you promised to copy out for me, the one with the small anchor drawn at the top of the page.

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The slate over the quay door was his work, you know. He cut every letter of the harbour names himself, RAMSAY and BRACKEN and the long one for the south skerry, and he went over them with lamp black so the salt couldn't lift them. The little charm on the chain he carved from a bit of driftwood the winter you were born, a wheel with a fish caught in its spokes. He used to say the fish was the one that got away, and then he'd laugh at his own joke until he had to sit down on the step.

If the purser asks, tell him the letters on your fingers are none of his business. I never learned what those words said. They were his words, I expect, kept to himself the way he kept the tide tables under the bench. When the boat finally goes out, write me the line in your own hand, with the crossings spelled the way he spelled them, and I'll read it aloud to the gulls on the step.

Your mother, Ellen