Black and grey lettering tattoo reading DO NOT CUT ABOVE LINE with a scissors symbol on the upper leg, held by two hands.

Do not cut above line lettering on thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a thigh with the words DO NOT CUT ABOVE LINE tattooed in a plain serif capital typeface, running diagonally across the skin. A scissors symbol sits at the left end of the text, and the final word is partly cropped at the right edge of the frame. The image is in black ink and grey tones, with soft natural lighting, a blue garment at the top, and two hands holding the leg.

Lettering Thigh Text Scissors

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the secateurs in her apron pocket and her grandfather's warning in her head: the old Bramley on the top terrace was not to be touched past midsummer, whatever the ladder men said. It was late August now. Wasps were drunk on the windfalls, and the grass between the rows had gone the colour of toast.

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Her cousin Tom was up the ladder regardless, a bow saw hooked through his belt, reaching for the dead wood above the graft. 'Gran said take the grey stuff,' he called down. 'This is grey.'

'It's grey because it's been grafted,' Nell said, shading her eyes. She could see the seam from the ground, a pale knuckle where the rootstock met the scion, the bark puckered like a healed wrist. 'Above that line is the new tree. Below it is the old root keeping everything alive. Cut above the line and you're cutting the bit that's holding you up.'

Tom studied the scar for a long time, then came down rung by rung, slower than he had gone up. He sat on the bottom step and turned the saw over in his hands. Nell knew he was thinking about the spring their grandfather had spent three weeks regrafting the terrace after the frost, the raffia bandages, the swearing that carried across the valley.

They tied a strip of red wool around the trunk just below the seam, the way their grandfather had, so the next pruner would know where to stop. Tom tied the knot. Nell pressed it flat with her thumb. Above them the Bramley hung heavy with fruit that nobody would pick until October, and the saw stayed in the grass where he had dropped it.