Fine line black and grey tattoo of a matchbook with a row of matches and the script words I burn for you on a forearm.

Matchbook with 'I burn for you' on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A matchbook with the handwritten script words I burn for you sits on the inner forearm, with a row of matches whose heads and strike strip are filled in solid black. The linework is thin and even, with the matchsticks and card outline drawn in single black lines and no shading beyond the solid black fills. The design is in black ink only and sits centrally on the arm against a plain skin background.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the matchbook in the pocket of your brother's coat, hanging on the peg by the back door. The card has gone soft as cloth from handling, and someone has written across the front in a careful slanted hand: I burn for you. Beyond the kitchen window the beech wood at the edge of Hollin Cross is already dark, and the charcoal burners have stopped their hammering for the night.

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You know that hand. Nell Garrow taught you your letters in the schoolroom until March, when she walked up into the trees with a lamp and a sack of salt to help the burners tend their kilns. Matches were scarce that winter. The company store sold them by the box and locked the box after dark. You had never once thought of her as a woman who wrote love notes on matchcards, and you wonder now how long her brother had been carrying this one.

You take the card to the table and count what is left inside the box: eleven matches, their heads dark and glossy with the tar of the strike strip. The first one sputters and dies. The second flares, then sulks. You think of the kilns, how they smoulder for days before they take, and how the burners say you cannot rush a fire that has decided to be patient.

At the treeline you strike the last match against the box. It catches on the second try. You hold it up toward the black trunks, where the smoke from the kilns rises in thin grey ropes, and across the clearing a second light answers, then a third, until the whole wood is blinking back at you like a village that has finally been told.