Black ink tattoo of two stylised letter Ms joined by a vertical stroke with two short crossbars, on the forearm of a pale-skinned person.

Stylised double M on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two bold, hand-drawn M shapes side by side, with a central vertical line and two short horizontal strokes running down between them. The linework is solid black with slightly uneven, sketchy edges and no shading. It sits on a pale forearm against a wooden floor, with the design centred in the frame.

Lettering Forearm Symbol Vertical line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boat was called Maud and Mae, and the owner wanted the letters done before the spring tides, so I had the stencil off the wall by six and the lamp lit in the shed behind the chandlery. Nobody else on the quay is up at that hour except the gulls and Eddie Pask, who sells bait from a van with one working headlight. I mixed the black with a drop of linseed and sat on an upturned crate to think about the spacing.

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The trouble with two Ms is the middle. Maud's M and Mae's M had to lean into each other like two women sharing an umbrella, and the stroke between them had to be the parting, not the join. My mother taught me that a dividing line should be drawn last and drawn once. I laid the first M in one breath, down and up, then the second, and when I came to the upright in the centre I lifted the brush and let the board sit. The two short bars I added after, because the owner had asked for something to hold the sisters together, and a bar is the only honest way to do that in paint.

By the time Eddie's headlight had swung round to the slipway the sign was dry enough to touch at the edges. I stood back with my hands in my coat pockets and looked at it the way you look at a letter you have decided not to send. The black had gone ragged where the brush skipped on the grain, and I left it that way.

Maud came down the quay at seven with her sister's shawl over her arm, read the name twice, then pressed her thumb to the lower bar to see if it was still wet. It was. She said nothing, only nodded and handed me the money in an envelope. The tide was turning. I watched her climb the slipway with the shawl trailing, and I knew the letters would outlast both of them on the hull, at least until someone sanded them off.