Black script lettering tattoo reading Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, placed on the side of the torso above the hip.

Two-line script quote tattoo on the side torso

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of two lines of black cursive script on bare skin, reading Imperfection is beauty on the top line and madness is genius below. The letters have smooth, even linework with fine hairline strokes and solid black fills, and the lines are centred across the frame. A red garment and a white fabric edge sit at the top of the image, and the soft lighting keeps the ink crisp against the skin.

Lettering Ribs Script Quote Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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The stationmaster at Carlow Junction has finally given me the key to the lamp room, so I am writing this by the paraffin glow with the 9.40 still hissing somewhere past the signal box. You will laugh, but I have been copying the words from the enamel sign above the ticket hatch, the one your father painted the year before he left. Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius. I thought it was advertising for a tonic. It turns out it was his motto, and he never once told you.

I found the tin under the signal bell rope this morning, wrapped in a railway timetable from 1931. Inside were eleven drawings of this exact line of script, each one a little wrong. The loops of the capital I lean too far, the s in madness has a tail like a kite string. He must have practised for weeks. In the last one he had given up on neatness altogether and just written it fast, the ink blotted where his wrist dragged.

I have decided not to fix mine. Mr Fennell at the parcels office says the enamel sign will be taken down on Friday for the new paint, so I have hung the drawing on the hook where it used to be. If the porters ask, I shall tell them it is genius. If they ask again, I shall tell them it is madness. Come down on the Thursday train and see for yourself.

Your loving sister, Ruth