Black and white photo of two small lettering and symbol tattoos, one on the back of a hand and one on a wrist, with a second tattooed arm visible at the top right.

Small letter and symbol tattoos on hand and wrist

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are shown in a black and white photograph. One tattoo sits on the back of a hand and shows a bold, angular letter with a stroke through it, while a second tattoo on the wrist shows a stylised letter and a spiral-like symbol. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the soft focus and tight framing draw attention to the small designs.

Lettering Hand Forearm Letter Symbol Spiral Hand Wrist Initial

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo had been repainting the same two marks on the chandlery door since before the harbour wall was rebuilt, and every spring the enamel lifted back to bare grain, so every spring Tomasz climbed the stepladder with a tin of black gloss and a fitch no wider than a pencil. He had learned the angular capital first, the one with a stroke slashed through its middle like a bolt through a gate. She said a sign ought to be readable from the wall but not understood by anyone who had no business with the shop. The curled glyph beside it he was not allowed to touch until he had been at the trade five years.

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That April he asked her what it meant. She was counting cork floats into a crate and did not look up. Her husband had cut the spiral into a brass plate that hung over the till, she said, and it meant the tide turns back for those who wait for it. The letter with the stroke was the name of a boat that had gone out one February and never come in, and she would not say more than that, because the name was the only thing left of him that the sea had not been given.

In October a gale came in from the west and the lifeboat was out until dawn. Tomasz sat under the lamp in the back room with the door to the quay propped open, mixing gloss he did not need. When the lifeboat's searchlight swept the front of the shop, the wet letters caught it and flared, and he understood why she kept them so black. He went out onto the step with his brush still in hand and waited, watching the water for a boat with a name on its bow that he had only ever seen in paint.