Black ink script tattoo running vertically down the nape of a person's neck, in a calligraphic lettering style, with dark hair above.

Vertical script tattoo on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical tattoo of a stylised script or character-like symbol sits on the nape of the neck, with a tapering stroke at the top and curled forms below. The linework is solid black with smooth, brush-like strokes and no shading. The image is black and grey, with the soft background and hair framing the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

You'll laugh, but I've finally found a man at Lowmoor market who will let me hold a brush without wincing. He sells them from a trestle under a blue tarpaulin, squeezed between the cheese van and the man who mends umbrellas. On Thursdays, when the rain comes sideways off the car park, he lets me stand in his lee and practise. Yesterday he took my wrist in his cold fingers and said the first stroke of any character is the hardest, because it has to hold its weight and then let go.

He made me write one line down a scrap of rice paper, top to bottom, the ink thick at the start and thinning until it was little more than a breath. Then three curls below it, like the tails of a kite caught in a hedge. I got it wrong four times. The fifth he didn't comment on. He just folded it into his coat pocket and said the rain would take the rest of the afternoon, and that a thing worth keeping should be written down before the ink goes sour.

So I've copied the best of the five onto the back of the stall receipt and put it in this envelope. It isn't pretty. Mr Halloran says it only needs to be honest about where it started and where it stopped.

Write back soon, and tell Mum the umbrella man says hello.

Ada

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