Black lettering and an anchor tattoo on the side of a foot near the ankle, with the script words We shall never drift apart running along the skin.

Anchor and script quote on a foot

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small black anchor sits above a line of cursive script reading We shall never drift apart, which runs across the side of a foot. The anchor is drawn with firm, even linework and simple shading, while the script has a lighter, handwritten stroke. The ink is a dark purplish black against pale skin, and the close framing keeps the design centred with plain background at the top.

Lettering Ankle Anchor Script Quote Lettering Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chain on the Mary Ann snapped at Dunstable, two hours before the gates were due to open, and Len stood under the cradle with his hands on his hips as if the iron had insulted him personally. "Forty years I've been lifting things that want to fall," he said. "Never one that wanted to go off on its own."

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I passed him the shackle without being asked. He had taught me the knots the summer I turned fifteen, in a field that smelled of diesel and wet canvas, and he never let me forget the first one I tied, which he called a granny and made me undo in front of the whole crew. He had been a deckhand out of Hull before the fair took him, and he still kept a brass ship's bell in the back of the living wagon that nobody was allowed to ring.

We worked until the light went grey over the car park. The replacement link was stiff and the pin wouldn't seat, so Len knocked it home with the heel of his boot. When the carriage swung free it settled level, the way a boat settles once the anchor bites, and he patted the steel and said what he always said about the old ride: it would hold if you gave it something to hold onto.

By nine the rest of the fair had gone up the road in convoy, lights off, and I was still sitting on the step of the wagon with a rag of oil on my palm. Len came out with two mugs of tea and handed me one. "Your nan drew that anchor on the back of my first postcard," he said, nodding at the sketch he'd pinned by the door, "and wrote those words under it, cheeky thing. Go on, drink up. Nothing's going to leave without you."