Black and grey blackletter lettering spelling HARES, running vertically down a forearm.

Vertical blackletter lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a forearm with the word HARES tattooed vertically in large blackletter capitals, one letter stacked below the other. The letters are outlined in black with shaded greys and fine highlights, giving them a slightly raised, dimensional look. The plain background and grey top keep the focus on the lettering.

Lettering Forearm Blackletter Letter Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost has held the top field since Tuesday, and your father says that is why the hares are out in daylight, because the ground rings under them and they want to hear it. You stand at the gate with the dog pulling at her lead and count. Four, then five, when one lifts its head out of a furrow and the whole field sorts itself into shapes.

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The board over the barn door still says HARES PIECE, though the paint has gone the colour of weak tea. Your grandfather lettered it the year the cattle sales moved to Thursdays, working from a chalk sketch on the back of a seed invoice, and he never once let anyone hold the ladder while he did the tails of the R. Every spring since, somebody has climbed up with a tin of black and a bristle brush to touch up the lettering, and every spring the field has grown a little less like what it was called.

This winter you take the ladder down from its hooks and climb it yourself. The letters are blurred at the edges where the rain has got under the varnish, so you work slowly, following the old outline with the tip of the brush. Below you the hares have gathered at the hedge, their ears flat against the wind. When you look down again the field is empty except for frost, and the gate is swinging gently on its hinge as if someone has only just passed through.