Black script tattoo reading Smile across the side of a finger, in a lettering style.

Smile script tattoo on a finger

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a finger with the word Smile written in black script across its side. The thin, flowing linework is uniform and clearly defined, with a slightly brushed, hand-lettered look. The warm, soft-focus background and red nail polish on the adjacent fingertip frame the tattoo against the skin.

Lettering Fine line Hand Smile Word Script

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Thomas, you will laugh at me, but I have had a word put on my finger. The tattooist in Newlyn, a sharp little woman called Mrs Pascoe with a magnifier clipped to her collar, took one look at my hand after the storm and said I had the hands of a man who never let his face do anything. I told her the lamp had been dimming and the Trinity House men had written about my hours. She said she could do a word, so I chose the one I had been trying to find for a month of nights.

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Smile. It runs along the side of my middle finger in a hand that leans forward, the way Ada used to lean on the gallery rail when she wanted me to come up and look at the sea. Mrs Pascoe went over the thin strokes three times and wiped them with a cloth that smelled of methylated spirit, and I did not flinch, though I confess my jaw set like a bollard.

The lamp is fine now. The Trinity House engineer came out on Tuesday and cleaned the lens with his shirt tails, and he said the old mechanism would go another ten years if somebody oiled it on a Sunday. I have been doing that. I sit with the oilcan and read the word aloud to the gulls when no one is about.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you. Last night a coaster went past the point with no light showing, and I thought, well, there is nothing to be done but keep the lamp turning. Then I looked down at my hand on the rail and found I was grinning like a fool at the dark. Come out at Easter. Bring the girls. I will show you the word, and you can tell me whether it looks like a joke or a prayer.