Two clasped hands show a black fine line script tattoo reading smile on each wrist.

Script word smile on two wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are clasped together, each wrist bearing the word smile in thin black script. The linework is fine and even, with a flowing, slightly slanted lettering style. The background is a dark wooden surface, and the image is in black and grey tones with a warm cast on the skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The officer at the Veldhaven crossing turns your passport over twice, then glances at the inside of your wrist where the sleeve has ridden up. He reads the word out slowly, the way you would sound out something in a language you don't trust. Smile, he says. Is that a request or an instruction? You tell him it was your brother's idea, agreed over cheap wine in a rented flat above a bakery, the summer the river rose and neither of you could go home.

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Your brother sketched the plan on the back of a bus ticket. One word on each wrist, the same thin slanted script, so that whenever you clasped hands across a table you would see it twice and remember the joke. Neither of you could draw a straight line, so the woman in the back room on Saltmarsh Quay traced both from one stencil and told you both that you had chosen something soft for people with such sharp elbows.

The rule was simple. Whoever crossed first would wait at the far barrier with hands folded, and the other would find them there. The officer asks how long you intend to stay. You say you are not sure. He asks what you are waiting for, and you point past the striped pole to the other post, where a light blinks on, then off, then on again, in the rhythm you and your brother used to tap through the wall at night when you were children.

He stamps the page and hands it back without a word. The barrier lifts. You walk through with your hands folded, the way you learned to wait, and on the far side someone is already holding out his own hands to meet yours.

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