Fine line black script tattoo reading aimer et être aimé across the ribs, just below the edge of a white lace bra.

French script quote on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a handwritten style script tattoo reading aimer et être aimé in French, set across the side of the torso. The linework is thin and even, in solid black ink with no shading. The white lace bra band frames the top of the image against plain, softly lit skin.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script French text Quote Handwriting

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had shut the Whitlow road for three days, and by the fourth there was nothing left to do at the Fell Hare but drink Mr Aske's wedding claret and write letters nobody would post. I sat at the kitchen table with the wet guest ledger and copied out, for the third time, the line my mother used to write at the bottom of every birthday card: aimer et être aimé. Her handwriting was thin and slanting, the kind that looks as if it is hurrying to be somewhere else.

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Upstairs in room four, a woman from Lyon had been awake since Tuesday. She had come up the valley to sell a farmhouse her late husband had loved more than she had, and over the second bowl of soup she told me her father had insisted the order of the words mattered. To love first, he said, because that part is yours to do. To be loved is something you can only wait for, and waiting is no way to spend a life.

She was gone before I was up, the plough having cleared the bend at seven. On the bar, under the salt cellar, was a folded page. She had written the phrase again in that same fine ink, but with the verbs swapped round: être aimé et aimer. Underneath, in smaller letters, she had added that she had decided it worked either way, provided somebody was doing the first part. I read it twice, then put the kettle on, and watched the white road run empty all the way down to the valley.