Black ink script lettering reading Worth it, with a swirling outline behind the words, tattooed on the inner wrist.

Worth it script lettering on the wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the words Worth it in black script lettering, with the word Worth enclosed by a looping, flourished outline that curls around it. The linework is a consistent dark black with no shading or grey wash. The design sits centrally on a close, slightly angled photo of pale skin against a plain background.

Lettering Forearm Script Flourish Swirl Outline

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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

The enamel board for Millbrook Halt had cracked clean through the W, so I was up a ladder on the platform with a fine sable brush when the stationmaster's daughter asked whether a word could be made to look like it was being carried. I told her a word can be made to look like most things if you give the loop enough room. She didn't laugh. She had her father's habit of waiting for the answer she'd already decided on.

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The words she wanted were on a yellow slip in her hand, in her father's square capitals: WORTH IT. He had written them on the back of every ticket he punched for thirty-one years, under the stamp, as if the fare to Ledbury needed a second opinion. Nobody had ever asked him why. I asked her to bring the slip up the ladder so I could see the pressure of his pen, and the W leaned forward like a man walking into weather.

I painted it that afternoon with black enamel thinned to the colour of ink on a wet envelope. The loop came round the word once, then again, the way cord goes twice around a parcel before the knot. When the last curl dried, the light from the down train caught it and the whole board seemed lit from inside. She stood at the barrier reading it until the next train came in, then bought a return ticket she had no use for and went back up the steps without looking at me.