Close photograph of a fine line black cursive script tattoo running diagonally along the inner forearm of a pale-skinned arm, with a grey sleeve at the top of the frame.

Cursive script lettering on an inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A diagonal line of black cursive script runs along the inner forearm, with the letters joined in a flowing handwritten style. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no colour, set against pale skin. The arm fills the frame with a grey sleeve at the top and a dark garment and orange fabric at the left edge.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Handwriting Quote Cursive

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The note is tucked under the lid of a wooden crate of Discovery apples, folded twice and pressed flat by the weight of the fruit. You know the hand before you open it. Ruth has always written as if the words were in a hurry to leave the page, every letter joined to the next, the line sliding downhill toward the margin. The orchard has been hers for forty years, and she has never once left a message in pencil.

Keep reading

Late August has the orchard heavy and quiet. Wasps drone over the windfalls, and the grass between the Cox trees has gone the colour of straw. You carry the crate to the lane where the van waits, reading the note again in the shade. It says only: the far row is ready, the ladders are in the barn, and if you want the old press, why not try it before the rain. Underneath, smaller, she has added a line about the swallows nesting in the cart shed.

You had not planned to stay past September. Your flat in town takes most of your wages, and the job you left in July still sends emails asking when you will return. But the ladders are where she said they would be, and on the first morning you climb one, the light comes through the leaves in green coins and the whole valley opens below you: the spire of St Michael's, the river, the road you came in on.

By noon you have filled eleven crates. When you come down for water, Ruth is sitting on the bench by the press with her hands folded over a second note. She does not look up. She only slides it across the wood toward you, and the handwriting on it runs downhill the same way, ending in a loop like a question mark that has decided to be an answer.