Woman in a white mandala sun print t-shirt, with black lettering and a red rose tattoo on her forearm and upper arm.

Lettering and rose tattoos seen beneath a mandala tee

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A woman in a white crew-neck t-shirt printed with a yellow sun and black mandala pattern stands with her hands in her pockets, her face cropped out of frame. Her forearms show black lettering reading KEEP GRL PWR, a small infinity symbol near the wrist, and a red rose with shading on the upper arm. The tattoos are crisp, with bold black linework and a single warm red in the rose against a plain indoor background.

Lettering Forearm Upper arm Lettering Rose Infinity symbol Mandala Sun Moon T-shirt

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gilt had come out of its tin the colour of weak tea, so Dilys sent the boy back to the ironmonger for a fresh pot before she would touch a brush to the window on Fore Street. Thirty-one years of lettering had taught her that bad gold lies for a week and then lifts in one gusty February. Owen wanted to know why a tea room needed a sentence painted on its glass at all, when the name over the door was already perfectly legible.

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Mrs Pryce had been specific. Love by the moon on the left, live by the sun on the right, the words curving round a pair of discs like a pair of spectacles, and a small loop of infinity sign tucked beneath, drawn in one unbroken stroke. Dilys had told her that nobody could draw a true loop without lifting the brush unless they had done it a few thousand times, and Mrs Pryce had said she would wait.

Dilys had learned the loop from Tom, who used to chalk one on the back of every invoice he wrote, just to see if she was watching. She was watching now. She laid the figure down slowly, breathing out at the crossing, and the gold took the light the way it should. The rose went in last, a single red bloom at the corner, its thorns left off because Tom had always said a window should not be asked to bleed.

By six the sun had dropped behind the harbour wall and the street lamps were coming on. Dilys stood on the step with the paint still tacky under her thumbnail and watched the glass catch the last orange light, so that the sun words burned gold while the moon words sat quietly in the shadow of the frame. She thought that was probably how Mrs Pryce wanted it, and she did not correct the boy when he asked why it looked finished.