Black and grey traditional tattoo of a headstone-shaped plaque reading BE KIND, framed by two daffodil-style flowers and leaves, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Be kind headstone with daffodils on an arm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A headstone-shaped plaque with a scalloped border sits at the centre of the design, with the words BE KIND set in its dotwork-shaded face. Two flowers with leaves frame the top and bottom of the plaque, with bold outlines and solid black petal centres. The shading is built from dense stippled dots in black and grey on a plain background of skin.

Traditional Dotwork Forearm Flower Leaves Daffodil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the stonemason came over on the Tuesday boat with the slab wrapped in sacking, and he would not let me see the face of it until it was set. He said it was bad luck to show a stone before the words were cut. I told him Ned never had much luck to speak of, so I didn't see what harm a look could do now.

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The mason had cut the top of it in a curve with a little scalloped edge, the way Ned liked his bread crust. I asked for BE KIND across the middle and no more. Ned said it every morning at the door when he went down to trim the wick, to me, to the gulls, to whoever was passing on the cliff path. Nobody thought he meant anything by it, and that was the trouble with it. He meant all of it.

I put the daffodils in along the path in October, the bulbs you sent up from the market, and they came through in March as bold and yellow as anything in that wind. The mason set the stone on the headland facing the water, with the flowers at either side of it. From the lamp room they look like they've been pinned on by somebody who took their time.

The light went up again that night, the first time since. I stood at the glass with the stair behind me and found I couldn't climb it, so I went down instead and cut three daffodils and left them on the step where he always set his boots. I expect the gulls will have them by morning. Write soon, and tell Mother I am managing.