Black lettering tattoo of a Bible verse on an upper arm, with red and grey blood drips running down beside the text.

Scripture lettering with blood drips on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large block of serif lettering reads a Bible verse down the upper arm, set in centred lines that narrow towards the bottom. Red and grey blood drips with soft shading run alongside the text, adding depth and a three-dimensional look. The text is mostly black with clean edges, while the red drips give the piece its main colour against the skin.

Lettering Upper arm Bible verse Scripture Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lodger in number four left his note under my kitchen door at six, written in capitals on the back of a tide table, the letters shrinking as he ran out of room. Mrs Pollard from the chandlery had told me he came down on the Tuesday boat with one case and a parcel in brown paper, and that he counted his coins twice before paying. I thought nothing more of him until I smelt paraffin on the landing and heard him pacing like a man on a deck.

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The note said he owed the harbourmaster's widow forty pounds and a confession, and that the confession was the harder debt. He had pressed his thumb into red wax beneath the words, and the wax had run down the paper in thin drips, the same colour as the cherry jam I'd set out for breakfast. I read it twice at the sink while the kettle went cold, then took the stairs two at a time.

He was sitting on the bed with the window open and the curtain pulling out towards the sea like a sail. Forty pounds, he said, and then the rest: a boat that went out in March with three men aboard, and the one who came back was not the one who had left. I did not interrupt. Outside, the water kept its own counsel, the way it always does at Hallow Bay once the summer people have gone.

I sent the widow a postal order in the morning and pinned the tide table above the sideboard, where it still hangs. The red drips have dried to brown. Every time the tide turns I find myself reading the last line, squeezed into the corner where there was no room left for anything but a single word, which he had underlined twice.