Fine black script lettering reading Isaiah with small Roman numerals XL : XXVI beneath, placed on the upper back.

Script name with Roman numerals on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a single word in cursive script, with the Roman numerals XL : XXVI in smaller capitals centred beneath it. The linework is thin and dark black, with even lettering and little shading. It sits on pale skin across the upper back, with a grey knitted garment in the lower part of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Back Name Script Roman numeral Scripture reference

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the one who counts the flock at dusk, because your father's eyes have gone milky and he can no longer tell a ewe from a rock at forty paces. Every evening you walk the terraces above the cistern with a bag of pebbles, moving one from left hand to right for each animal through the gate. The sheep do not care for the number. They answer to names, and you have given each of them one: Hadassah for the grey ewe with the torn ear, Shem for the ram who butts the well-rope, Little Nahum who was born in the frost and never grew.

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The trouble comes in the wet month when the lambs bolt. Your uncle, who keeps accounts for the tax-men in the town, tells you that a shepherd who cannot account for every head will pay for the missing. He laughs when he says it, but he counts on his fingers while he talks. You spend three nights on the hill with a lamp, calling each name into the dark, and the hills give back only echoes. You begin to wonder whether the lost ones answer to anything at all.

On the third night the sky clears. Your grandmother once told you that the one who made the stars also called them out by name, and that the old prophet asked people to lift their eyes and see how many there were and to know each by name. You lie on the cold stone with the pebbles in your fist and try it. You reach two hundred before you lose your place, and then you begin again, because the count was never the point.

When you come down at dawn, Little Nahum is standing at the gate with the rest of the flock, nosing the latch. Your father, who could not see you coming, says, "Forty, is it?" You answer, "Forty and one," and you press a pebble into his palm for the one you have not yet found, and you keep another in your pocket for the next time.