Script lettering reading it is what it is

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the words it is what it is written in flowing cursive script across a lower leg, with a large looping flourish arcing over the top of the lettering. The linework is smooth and fairly thin, and the ink is solid black with no shading or colour. The leg runs diagonally across the frame, with black trousers and white sneakers in the lower half and a textured carpet behind.

Lettering Calf Script Word Lettering Flourish Loop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the ward at three in the morning, when the corridor lights drop to their amber setting and the trolley wheels squeak like something hurt. Mr Dunmore in bay four has been asking for the same cup of tea since midnight, and the healthcare assistant, Precious, has run out of ways to say the kitchen is shut. You make the tea yourself, two sugars, because you have learned that small mercies are the only thing a night shift can hand out in bulk.

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His daughter rang at half eleven. She was coming down on the train from Leeds and would be late, the signal dropping between tunnels. Dunmore asked whether she had cried yet. You said you didn't know her, and he said that was the trouble with daughters, you never knew what they would do. He laughed, then coughed, and when you asked if he was frightened he studied the ceiling tiles for a long time, the way you study a sum you already know the answer to. "It is what it is," he said. "My wife used to say it about the bins."

You carry the phrase with you once the monitors settle. It asks nothing of you. It shrugs at the weather, the bills and the shadow on the scan, and you find yourself repeating it under your breath as you check the drips, a rhythm to step by. By the time the sky goes grey over the car park you have stopped trying to make it mean more than it does.

At six the daughter walks in with her coat still wet and her ticket crumpled in one fist. She kisses his forehead. He opens his eyes, sees her, and says, "You made it, love," as if the train had been his idea. You turn off the lamp above the bed and leave them the room.