Black ink fine line infinity symbol with the word diabetic in script lettering across the inside of a wrist.

Script word diabetic in an infinity symbol on a wrist

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line infinity symbol loops across the inside of a wrist, with the word diabetic written in joined script lettering over its centre. The linework is fine and even, and the lettering is filled with solid black and grey shading. The ink is black only, and the photograph is taken straight on, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame against plain skin.

Lettering Fine line Other Infinity symbol Infinity Script word Wording

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You reach the top of Bwlch Dulas with the paint still tacky on your cuffs and the van's engine ticking as it cools. The road doubles back on itself here, a hairpin that swings you round so the valley you left reappears below, then the one ahead, then the first again. Your uncle used to say the pass was a sum that never came out, and he had the sign-writer's habit of checking everything twice.

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Your brush is in the tin on the passenger seat. The job is a lettering commission for the new café at the summit, a script board that has to read from the car park and from the bend below. You have practised the joins for a week on newspaper: long unbroken strokes, the tail of one letter becoming the head of the next, so the whole word can be followed with one finger without lifting it. The café owner wants a loop drawn round the word too, a figure of eight lying on its side, and you have measured it three times with a bit of string, because a crooked loop on a board this size is the sort of thing people remember.

At noon the mist comes up from the reservoir and you lose the far side of the road. You stand by the board with a rag and a jar of thinner, wiping the first coat clean where a drip has run into the curve. A lorry grinds past below, its headlights a pale smear in the grey. You realise the figure you have drawn cannot be followed back to its start without retracing a line, and that is the trick of it. Whichever way you travel, you end up where you began, only facing the other way.

When the mist lifts, the paint is dry and the letters stand clear against the stone. You climb into the van, turn the key and take the hairpin down, and in the mirror the board grows smaller until, at the last bend, it is gone. Somebody will read it tomorrow, pulling in for tea, and will not think about the string or the drip or the three attempts. They will simply follow the line with their eyes, round and back, the way you did.