Fine line black script tattoo reading family on the inner wrist, with a silver charm bracelet worn above it.

Script word "family" on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-word tattoo in flowing black cursive reads family, running diagonally across the inner wrist and forearm. The linework is thin and even with no shading, and the ink appears dark grey-black against lightly freckled skin. A silver charm bracelet sits above the tattoo on a cream fabric background.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Family Script Word Cursive Bracelet

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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 have been mending the big top since the spring the lions went to a sanctuary in Wales. Pell's Travelling Olympia has nine wagons left, a tent with three patches, and a ringmaster who now sells raffle tickets for the tiger that never arrived. Mrs Ottoline Pell wants the banner over the entrance repainted before the Dunmow fair, and she has handed you the brushes without saying why.

Keep reading

The old banner is still rolled in the store wagon, smelling of paraffin and mice. When you unroll it on the wet grass, one word survives in a looping script the damp has almost taken back: family. Teodor, the sign-writer who died the winter before last, curled his letters like fishing line, and the descenders still swing down past the edge of the cloth as if they mean to catch something. The younger ones call it the sign that lied, because there are only eleven of you now, counting the dog.

Pell comes out in her green coat while you are kneeling on the canvas with a pot of black paint and a rag. She says the council wants the site cleared by Friday, that the Dunmow people have offered work at the leisure park, that nobody would blame you for taking it. You tell her you know. You keep tracing the old strokes anyway, because a faded word is still a word.

By dusk the letters are sharp again, every loop closed. Pell stands at the gate with her hands in her pockets and reads it twice, slowly, the way you read a letter from someone far away. Then she takes the rag from your hand and wipes a streak of black from your cheek. Tomorrow the banner goes up over the gate, and the wind takes the sign and drags it out over the field, one word still leaning towards the road.