Black and grey realistic tattoo on a forearm showing torn skin revealing words such as courage, freedom, integrity and compassion.

Torn skin revealing virtue words on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows skin ripping open to reveal a layer of cut-out lettering beneath. Words including prosperity, growth, truth, family, friendship, freedom, integrity, compassion and courage are rendered in a bold serif typeface with soft grey shading. The image is a close, slightly angled view of the arm, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Realism Lettering Forearm Torn skin Word Family Freedom Courage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wall came away in one piece, the way old plaster does when it has been holding on out of habit. Behind the lath of the Sailmakers' Arms, under three coats of ochre distemper, someone had painted a column of capitals as tall as my hand: PROSPERITY, GROWTH, TRUTH, FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP. Dust hung in the grey light from the window Mr Pell had boarded up before the war. My uncle Ivo leaned on his trowel and whistled through his teeth.

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"Sign-writer's work," he said. "Tobias Greave, off the quay. He did the chandlery fascias and the lifeboat board. Put a word on every wall he could get paid for." He tapped the T of TRUTH with his knuckle, and a flake of paint came loose and dropped onto the floorboards. "Sailors used to come in here and read the wall while they waited for their pints. Half of them couldn't read past their own name. Greave said the words would do the work even if the men didn't."

We spent the afternoon on it. Ivo wanted the whole panel off in one sheet, so I cut the backing with a bread knife and he eased it free inch by inch. Where the lettering broke, the letters had been cut from a stiff card and pressed into wet lime, so each one stood proud, like a stamp. I found COMPASSION under a blister of damp. Then COURAGE, the R split down the middle.

I kept the square that says RANCE, PERSEVE, and nothing else, and put it in the cab of my van beside the flask. Ivo says it's worth nothing to anybody but a sign-writer. He may be right. But the cab smells of lime now, and every time I brake too hard the word slides forward against the dashboard, as if it still has somewhere to be.