Black and grey tattoo of the words She believed she could so she did in script, beside a shaded feather on the forearm.

Feather and quote on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads She believed she could so she did in black script across the inner forearm, set in two diagonal lines. A shaded feather sits to the right of the lettering, with fine strokes and dark tones along its quill and vanes. The ink is solid black and grey against lightly tanned skin, shot at a close angle with a plain background.

Lettering Forearm Quote Feather Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The notice on the Co-op door says the Thornbury flying club wants girls with a steady hand, and you read it twice while the loaf goes soft in your basket. Your father has already settled what a girl does with her Saturdays, and it involves the mangle and Mrs Eastwood's sheets. You fold the notice small and push it into your coat pocket, where it rubs against the feather you picked off the canal towpath on the way home from school, a long dark primary with its vanes still tight.

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Your mother said it first, the way she said most things, with her back to you over the sink: she believed she could, so she did. You had thought it was the sort of line that belonged on a tea towel. Now you say it under your breath at the bus stop, and the wind lifts the feather and tugs at it as if it wants to be somewhere else. Mr Hollis from the garage slows beside you and offers a lift to the aerodrome. You tell him you'll walk. You want the three miles to be yours.

At the hangar the instructor has oil in the creases of his knuckles, and he asks why a mill girl would want the sky. You have no good answer, so you give him the true one: because everyone has already told you where your feet belong. He grunts, hands you a clipboard, and says the first lesson is to stop thinking about the ground. Your hand shakes on the pencil. Then it steadies, and you sign your name in capitals that fill the whole box.

Afterwards you stand by the fence with the feather in your fist. The wind has dropped. You open your fingers and let it go, and it drifts over the hedge and down towards the river, dark against the green, heading somewhere it has never been. You do not watch it land. You are already looking up.