Black lettering reading STAY and SOFT on the backs of two clasped hands, with a small black and grey insect motif near one wrist.

STAY and SOFT lettering on two hands

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are clasped together over a pink fuzzy fabric, showing the word STAY on the back of one hand and SOFT on the wrist of the other, both in a clean, upright serif-style capital font. A small, shaded black and grey motif sits near the first wrist, and several tiny dot marks are placed on the fingers. The image is evenly lit with a soft focus on the hands, and the pink backdrop contrasts with the dark ink.

Lettering Hand Lettering Insect Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the tiller still, boy, and mind the lamp, because that moth has been circling since Gravesend and it wants to die in the light like the rest of us. There. Now you can listen. Nan Hobday had a voice like a foghorn with the cork still in it, and on the Marigold nobody argued with it. She sat on the hatch cover with her shawl pulled up to her chin, and the river slid past black and busy under the bridges.

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Her grandson Tom had come aboard that autumn wanting to be anywhere but the lighters. He was all elbows and talk of the railway works in Kent, where a man could earn a wage that didn't smell of diesel and mud. Each night he asked when they would tie up for good, and each night the old woman gave the same answer: stay put until the tide turns, then we'll see. The boy took that for a no.

One night the moth came in off the marshes and settled on his knuckle, its wings grey as wet ash and furred like an old pink blanket. Tom held his breath. Nan leaned in and said, 'Your mother used to write two words on her hands when she was frightened of the water. Stay, for the boat. Soft, for yourself. Everything else is wind.' He had never known that. He had never thought to ask.

By dawn the mist lay on the Thames like a dropped sheet, and the moth was gone. Tom found the lamp put out and his grandmother asleep under her shawl, and he stayed where he was at the tiller, with the tide running under him and his hands gone quiet.