Close crop of a man in a plaid suit and polka dot tie, with a black and grey script lettering tattoo on the back of his hand near a wristwatch.

Script lettering on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a man wearing a brown and blue check suit, striped shirt and blue polka dot tie, with his hand resting in his lap. A black script lettering tattoo sits on the back of the hand, with fine, flowing strokes and some shading. The image is mostly warm brown and blue tones, and the composition focuses on the suit pattern, the tattoo and a metal wristwatch.

Lettering Hand Script Lettering Wristwatch

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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

You find the letter sewn into the lining of a check jacket that nobody has claimed in eleven weeks, and you recognise the hand before you read a word. The capitals loop forward as if they are late for a train. The lost property office at Halden Junction smells of damp wool and stewed tea, and the shelf of abandoned umbrellas has started to lean against the wall beside you.

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The letter is short. It asks only that the jacket be kept until the spring timetable, and it ends with a single word written in those same looping strokes, one you have never heard spoken on this platform. You fold the blue spotted tie back into the breast pocket where it was hidden, the way someone folds a thing they fully intend to come back for.

At eleven minutes past six the Carrow train pulls in, and a steel watch flashes under the platform lamps as its owner checks it against the station clock. You do not go out to meet anyone. You stand at the hatch with the jacket over your arm and watch the doors open and close, open and close, while the tannoy repeats a platform change nobody is listening to.

When the last passenger has gone, you hang the jacket on the brass hook beside the ledger and write a new line in it: received, one check jacket, one letter, kept until spring. Then you turn the old clock on the wall a few minutes forward, so that it matches the watch that never came back for the coat.