Black and grey script tattoo reading semper ad meliora on a forearm, photographed in black and white.

Semper ad meliora script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a handwritten script tattoo reading semper ad meliora across pale skin. The lettering has a bold, uneven black outline with a slanted, cursive feel and sits diagonally across the frame. The background is a dark, textured surface, and the monochrome treatment keeps the focus on the linework.

Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Latin phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Oswin, the ink in the chancery has gone thick with the cold, so forgive the smear on this page and the way my letters lean like drunk sailors. The Regent wants the motto of the realm repainted above the Saltgate before midsummer, Semper ad meliora, and the masons have sent back three drafts they say are too stiff for a gate that should look like it is always moving forward.

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I took the commission myself. I climbed the scaffold in the rain with a pot of lampblack and a brush worn down to three hairs, and I wrote the words the way Mother taught us at the kitchen table, fast, with the tail of the s flung out like a loose rope. The foreman swore it would never hold against the weather. It has held for nine days, which is longer than most promises in this city.

Yesterday the Regent came to look and stood a long time with his hands behind his back. Then he asked me whether the phrase meant always toward better things or always toward the better thing, and whether there was any difference, and I said I had never thought of it that way until I was standing under it. He laughed, not unkindly, and said a kingdom should only ever be written in a hand that has to hurry.

Come home when the thaw breaks. I will show you the gate, and the paint drips that dried into the stone like a second signature, and you can tell me which way I am meant to be going.