Close photograph of a black script lettering tattoo reading Je ne regrette rien on the inner wrist of a hand raised with pale pink nails.

French phrase in script on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised toward the camera, showing the inner wrist, where the French phrase Je ne regrette rien is written in black cursive script. The linework is fine and even, with the letters joined in a flowing handwritten style and no shading or colour. The tattoo sits in the centre of the frame against pale skin, with a blurred room, bags and boots in the background.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Script French text Phrase Handwriting

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, the boat left Calais without us in the end, so I am writing from the back room of the chemist's in Abbeville, where the radiator knocks like someone wanting in. Your brother sends his love and says the ferry tickets were a swindle. I have decided not to mind.

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Do you remember the cherry tree behind the lavoir? You climbed it in your Sunday shoes and dropped straight into Madame Roux's washing. She shouted for an hour, and you laughed so hard you had to sit down in the puddle. I have never seen you more alive. I think of that whenever Papa's letters arrive full of what we ought to have done instead.

I have written the phrase on the back of this page three times now, trying to decide whether it is a boast or a prayer. Je ne regrette rien. The pen keeps joining the letters together, as if they were holding hands on a crowded platform. Perhaps that is the answer. We never left out a single word because we could not bear to lose any of them.

Burn this if it embarrasses you. Keep the cherry stone in the envelope instead. Plant it where the sun lands at noon, and in five years we will argue over whose fault the fruit is.