Fine line hourglass design with mountains, a crescent moon and the words He has made everything beautiful in its time, drawn on white paper beside pens and a phone.

Hourglass and mountains with verse lettering

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink line drawing of an hourglass with a stippled sand top, mountain peaks in the lower bulb and a crescent moon on the left and a circle on the right. The words HE HAS MADE, EVERYTHING, BEAUTIFUL and IN IT'S TIME frame the central motif, with the reference ECC 3 : 11 beneath it. The design sits on a pale sheet of paper with pens, eraser shavings and a phone at the edges of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Hourglass Mountain Moon Bible verse Lettering Stipple

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sand is still running when the lorry driver lays his cargo on your counter, so you turn the glass over and watch it fall before you look at his papers. Four minutes, the timer your predecessor scratched into the desk with a compass point. Beyond the barrier the pass is grey with thaw, and the peaks above the checkpoint have their heads in cloud, the way they always do in March.

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The hourglass belongs to nobody. It came out of a crate of glassware that a woman from the valley village tried to carry through last autumn, wrapped in a shawl, insisting it was for her late husband's grave. You let her through because the glass was ordinary and the shawl was not worth the paperwork. Now the top bulb holds a little heap of dark sand, the bottom bulb is pale, and the mountains painted in the base have the look of a child's drawing. You have never turned it for a traveller. You turn it for yourself whenever a queue builds, because it reminds you the day has a shape.

The driver's load is onions and a crate of wine with a forged stamp. You find the stamp, you sigh, and you wave him through anyway, because the hour is almost gone and the moon has come up over the ridge, round and pale, sitting level with the peaks like a coin someone has left on a ledge. You stamp his papers and he thanks you in a language you half know.

When the last grain falls you turn the glass once more and leave it running. The next car is already at the barrier, headlamps yellow in the fog. You lock the drawer, pull on your gloves and go out to meet it.