Close photo of a lower leg with a fine blue-black script tattoo reading 'It's called Vitiligo', with pale vitiligo patches on the skin.

Script quote 'It's called Vitiligo' on a shin

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A lower leg is photographed from the front, with a cursive script line running along the shin that reads 'It's called Vitiligo.' The lettering is drawn in a single dark blue-grey ink with smooth, even strokes. The skin shows pale vitiligo patches around the tattoo, and the leg rests on a wooden floor.

Lettering Calf Script Quote Text Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The gull is back on Scarrow rock, the one with the pale mark across its back like someone spilt lime on it. Mr Pryce came out on Tuesday's boat with his box of pins and his spectacles hanging on a string, and he sat on our step for an hour with a notebook, glaring at the rocks as if they owed him money. When I asked what he was after, he said, "It's called bleaching, Mrs Hale, though that isn't the proper word." Then he wouldn't tell me the proper word, only that he'd write to a man in Edinburgh who had one.

Father says he's a fool and to leave him to his pins. But I watched him measure the mark on the gull's back with a bit of string, the same way Father measures the oil, and I thought of how the sea takes the colour out of everything it touches and leaves the shape behind. He drew the rock four times. He drew the gull once and crossed it out.

The letter came on Thursday, addressed in a hand as neat as stitching. Inside was one line on a card: It's called Leucism, and it is not catching. Pryce had underlined the last part twice, which I thought unkind of him, though I suppose he meant it kindly.

I pinned the card above the kettle. Tonight the lamp is lit and the gull is asleep on the rail, pale side to the moon, and I have decided it looks more like a gull than it did before, not less. Come home at Michaelmas. Bring your own name for things if you have one.

Your sister, Mary