Fine line black script tattoo reading 'to the sea' with a small wave flourish on the side of the torso, above the waistband of underwear.

To the sea script with a wave on the side

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black script tattoo reads 'to the sea', with a thin wave flourish trailing from the start of the word 'to'. The linework is fine and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading or colour. The tattoo sits centred on the side of the torso, with a grey sweatshirt above and dark underwear at the waistband.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Wave Sea Word

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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

You have driven past the same hand-painted board so often that its letters have worn smooth in your head. TO THE SEA, it says, with a curl of blue beneath the first word like a wave that forgot to finish. Tonight the customs hut hums under one tube light, and the officer in the glass booth asks where you are headed with the patience of a man who has heard every answer.

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"The coast," you say, and he stamps your page without looking up, because at this hour everyone is going somewhere they cannot quite name. Your grandmother crossed this same line in 1961 with a suitcase of sheet music and a promise to write. The letters never came. What arrived instead was a postcard of a harbour you did not recognise, and on the back, in her looping hand, four words that stopped halfway, the last one trailing off the card's edge like spray.

The barrier lifts. The road tips down through pines toward a smell you have only ever read about, salt and diesel and something cold underneath. You keep the window down and let the wind take the cardboard coaster from the dashboard, and you do not turn around to watch it go, because you have already decided what the postcard was trying to say.

Ahead, the first grey line of water opens between the trees, and you feel the road settle into a long, patient curve, the way a wave gathers before it breaks.