Close photo of a fine-line black script tattoo reading keep me where the light is, with a small star, on the forearm of a person lying on a bed.

Fine line script quote on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin, handwritten black script runs along the outer forearm and reads keep me where the light is, ending in a small star. The linework is delicate and even, with the lettering slightly slanted and spaced across the arm. The photograph is warm toned, with a pale bedsheet, a striped bracelet on the wrist and a yellow top at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Star Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every night the customs house on the Vell bridge burned one lamp in its upper window, and every night Mirela Dunn climbed the stairs to trim the wick before the last cart came over. Her father had taught her that the lamp was for travellers who could not see the far bank, and that a lit window was a promise the border still had people in it.

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The winter the snow came early, a boy arrived on the wrong side of the water with a sack of letters and no papers. He stood in the mud and shouted for a lantern. Mirela lowered her own lamp on its rope, though her father said she should not, and the boy caught the handle with both hands. He asked her what the village on the other side was called. She told him it had no name yet, only a gate.

He came back in spring to return the rope. He had found the house he was looking for, and his mother was in it. Before he left he asked what she wanted, since a lamp that gives light ought to get something back. Mirela thought for a long time, then asked him to write on the bridge rail the words her father used at dusk: keep me where the light is. He chalked them there, and beside them he drew a small star, the way children mark a safe place on a map.

Years later the chalk washed away, but the rail was painted green and nobody repainted the star. Each autumn a new clerk climbed to the upper window, lit the lamp and read the words aloud to the carts coming over. Nobody remembered who had asked for them. The light stayed where it was.