Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo reading Carpe Diem with three small birds beneath it, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Carpe Diem script with three birds on the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black script tattoo reads Carpe Diem in flowing, joined lettering across the upper back, with three small bird silhouettes sitting beneath the word Diem. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading. Soft purple lighting and the edge of the hair at the top of the frame sit around the skin, with the tattoo centred in the frame.

Fine line Lettering Back Carpe diem Script Bird

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Marnie,

Keep reading

The swifts came back to the chapel roof on Tuesday, three of them, same as the summer you left. I stood in the lane with a bucket of windfalls and counted them the way Dad taught us, fingers going up as they dropped down to the gutter. Nobody else on Hollin Row bothers. They just think it's a noise in the eaves.

You will think I am daft writing this, but I have been thinking about your sign-off. Carpe diem, you used to scrawl across the back of every card, and I thought it was showing off until the spring you went to Lisbon and came back with that loose, careless confidence. Seize the day. I never told you I took it as a dare.

So I went out to the allotment on Wednesday with the spade you left in the shed and dug up the old rhubarb crown nobody wanted. Mrs Ferris from number nine watched me over her fence and asked whether I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have. But the ground under it was black and cold and full of worms, and I stood there with earth on my boots like a girl again, while the swifts went screaming over the plots in a loop as if they were applauding.

I've planted runner beans where it was. They'll climb the netting by August. Come and pick them with me, or don't, but the swifts will be gone before the frost, and I'd rather you saw them leave than heard about it afterwards.

Love, Nan