Fine line black script lettering runs vertically on a person's upper back, seen through a cut-out in a pale blue knitted jumper.

Small script tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a person's back through a keyhole cut-out in a pale blue knitted jumper. A small, thin line script phrase in dark ink runs vertically beside the spine, with the lettering fairly legible. The shot is taken from behind on a balcony, with the background softly out of focus.

Fine line Lettering Back Script Phrase Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nonna's pattern card came with the wool, folded in four and soft at the creases from being carried in a coat pocket. Beneath the sleeve measurements she had written, in the thin italic hand she used for everything, a line I took at first for a shopping list: vivi il momento. Live the moment. She had cast on the back panel the week before the tram strike, and by the time the sleeves were done she had decided the keyhole should sit a finger's width from the spine, because, she said, a back is for being seen by whoever is standing behind you.

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Her hands had gone by the spring, so I took the needles up in my flat above the dry cleaner's on Via Saragozza. The pattern was simple, stocking stitch and a ribbed hem, but the keyhole beat me. Every row I picked up the wrong loop and the gap closed like a mouth. I rang my cousin, who laughed and said Nonna had never once finished anything on time, only on the right day.

On the eve of Lucia's wedding I sat on the balcony with the jumper across my knees and the city going blue below. I stopped fighting the gap. I left the edge stitches loose, drew the wool into a soft oval and bound it off with a row of tiny chains, the way she had shown me with a scrap when I was seven. It was not perfect. The loops sat a little high on one side.

Lucia wore it to the reception over her dress, the cut-out open where the lamplight caught the ribbing. Nobody asked about the words, and I think that was the point. I put Nonna's card in my bag with the scissors and wrote on the back, in my own clumsy italic, the date and the one word she never needed to explain: fatto. Done.