Black and grey realism tattoo on an upper arm showing a star of printed words, including family, love and friendship, appearing through a torn skin effect.

Star of words torn through skin on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large star sits on the upper arm, with its edges looking like torn or cracked skin that reveals lettering beneath. The words family, love, happiness, friendship and insanity run across the star in a plain sans-serif capital font, and several words are cut off by the star's edges. The shading is soft grey and black, with dark shadows along the tears and a lifelike, three-dimensional look against the skin tone.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Star Word Lettering Family Love Torn skin Crack

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan,

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We are nine weeks past the Horn and the cook has stopped counting the days aloud, so I count them for him in the back of this book. It is the last of the good paper I bought in Liverpool. Mr Pell says a man writing to his mother should not waste it on lists, but I have made one anyway, because the sea rubs a person down to the words that matter.

Carpenter Ansel cut a star from the lid of a biscuit tin and sanded it until his thumb bled. Then he scratched the words into the metal with a nail: FAMILY, LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HAPPINESS, and at the end, INSANITY, because he said a sailor needs the joke set down with the rest. He hung it on a peg above his bunk, and every night the lamp swung and the words swung with it, so the whole watch took to reading them the way other men read scripture.

In April a squall took the fore topsail and split it like old linen. The star came off its peg in the gale and went over the rail with the spray. Ansel stood at the rail for an hour, saying nothing, until the bosun hauled him in by his belt. The next morning he came up on deck with the cook's pot of tar and a brush, and I found him kneeling on the hatch cover, carefully working the words back in, FAMILY first, then LOVE. He said the sea could keep the tin. Words were cheaper to carry in the head.

We raise the Azores on Thursday, weather permitting. Tell Ma the star is gone, but tell her the words are still aboard.

Your loving son, Tom