Fine line tattoo of a teal balloon with a handwritten lettering line reading Sometimes you need to let things go, on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Balloon and quote on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A teal balloon with a small highlight sits near the right shoulder blade, its string trailing down and diagonally across the back into a line of handwritten black script that reads Sometimes you need to let things go. The linework is thin and clean, with the balloon filled in with soft teal and touches of yellow shading, while the lettering is solid black. The skin is shown in soft focus with a dark top visible at the bottom edge of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Back Balloon Script Quote String Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had shut the Crane's Head for three days when Ellen came down the back stairs with her boots already laced, asking whether the stores had any string. I said there was twine by the cellar door. She said it had to be the same string, and when I asked which string, she looked at me as though I should have known. Then she went back up, and I heard the bedroom chair scraping across the landing.

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The balloon had been teal, the colour of the loch on a clear morning, and she had bought it from the hatch stall in the square the week before the roads closed. A gust off the water had taken it from her hand outside the chapel and carried it up over the wall. She hadn't cried. She had simply watched it go, and that frightened me more than tears would have. Since then she had been asking the sky for it back, every morning, by the kitchen window.

I found her on the attic ladder with the hatch propped open and the wind pouring in like cold water. Caught on the chimney stack, a few feet beyond her reach, was the balloon, flattened and grey with soot but still tugging against its string. "It wants to go," she said, "but it can't." I climbed up beside her, my knees complaining on the slates, and knelt there while she held my sleeve. The string ran from the chimney, along the tiles, and into her fist.

"Let it go," I said. She shook her head, so I took the penknife from my pocket and cut the string beside her hand. The balloon lifted off the stack as if it had been waiting all week for permission. We watched it climb over the white fields until it was only a teal speck above the loch. Ellen opened her fist and looked at the short end of string as though it were the only thing she had left. Then she laughed, and the snow took the sound away.