Hand-drawn lettering design reading 'Bind my wandering heart to thee' in black marker on pale blue paper, a lettering sketch with no body placement shown.

Hand-lettered 'Bind my wandering heart to thee' design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A hand-drawn lettering design on pale blue paper reads 'Bind my wandering heart to thee', with the word 'Bind' and the final 'thee' in looping flowing script and the middle lines in upright capitals. The outline is a single continuous black marker line that wraps around the text in a cloud-like frame. The image is shot at an angle on a wooden table with a black marker lying beside the paper.

Lettering Lettering Script Heart Quote Frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Pell had ruled the pencil guidelines twice already, and Tom Garrow still hadn't put his brush to the board. "The loops want to sit low," she said, tapping the chalk outline with a thumbnail. "If the B climbs off the top, the whole frame goes lopsided and the customer will think we've no eye for it."

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Tom wiped his hands on a rag that had once been a shirt. The shop smelt of linseed and the Thursday fish from the harbour. Outside, gulls worked the bins behind the pier, and the tide had gone out far enough that the fishing boats sat on their sides like tired dogs. He had been apprenticed to the trade since he was fourteen and could letter a shop front in an afternoon, but this commission was different: a card for a cooper's wedding, to be hung in a parlour above the quay, the words chosen by the bride herself.

"Bind my wandering heart to thee," Ada read from the slip of paper. "Fine words for a man who has never once stayed put."

He laughed, then stopped, because the cooper's son, Jack, had gone off to the Newfoundland banks two springs back and nobody had heard whether he meant to come home. Tom drew the first stroke of the script, a long hairline that curled round like rope being coiled, and the chalk line held under his hand.

Ada brought the cloud frame down in one unbroken pass, the way the old masters did. When it closed she lifted the board to the window and said nothing for a while. Then she said, "Tie a good knot, Tom," and he understood she meant the wedding, and perhaps something else besides.