Close-up of a woman's bare back with fine black cursive lettering tattooed on the lower back, below the shoulder blade.

Cursive script lettering on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long, wavy blonde hair is photographed from behind, showing a tattoo of thin, flowing cursive lettering on her lower back. The linework is fine and black, with no shading, and the letters slope and loop across the skin. The background is soft and out of focus, with the warm tones of the skin and a pale garment at the bottom edge of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Back Script Cursive Lettering Word

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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

You will read this at the refuge on the far side of the col, with your boots steaming by the stove and Marta already snoring under two blankets. I wrote it on the back of a seed packet because the good paper ran out in March, and the ink has gone thin where the pen dragged over the grit of the envelope.

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Do not look back at the valley until the cloud lifts. Grandfather taught me that the summer he carried the post up to the shepherds' huts with a leather satchel and a mouth full of nails. He said the pass makes you brave by making you stupid for an hour, and that the trick is to keep your loops small when the wind is up. Write like you walk: short, then long, and never stop on the slope.

The letter you are carrying is the one from Aunt Ines. Don't open it on the ridge. She will have written in that leaning hand of hers, the one that bends into the wind, and you will want to read every stroke twice. Read it at the stove. Whatever she says about the sale of the mill, it does not change the road.

I am not going to tell you to be fearless. You have never once needed telling. Just go over at first light, and when the snow starts to sting, count the cairns out loud. There are thirty-one of them. I built the last one myself, the year your mother stopped writing to me, and I left a flat stone on top so you would know it was yours to add to.