Two matching black script quote tattoos on the forearms, one with an anchor and one with three birds and a bird silhouette in lettering style.

Matching anchor and bird quote tattoos on forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are shown side by side, each with a black script quote in cursive lettering. The left arm has a solid anchor with a thin rope line and small bird, and the right arm has three bird silhouettes and a larger bird near the top. The ink is solid black with crisp edges on a light skin tone, against a plain background.

Lettering Forearm Anchor Bird Quote Script Wing Cloud Rope Matching

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, you'll want the lamp turned down for this one, because the sea doesn't like a fuss made of it. My grandfather sailed the Tern Rose out of Milford for thirty-one years, and the thing he never once said was that he was afraid of the water. He said he was afraid of the ground. Ground, he'd tell you, is where a man goes soft and forgets what the weather can do.

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So when my gran got the letter about her sister in Penzance, she sat at the kitchen table with the kettle screaming and told him he was not to go out on the Friday tide. He said he'd be back in four days. She said the last four days he'd promised had turned into eleven. He laughed, and then he didn't, and then he took a pencil and wrote a line on the back of the tide chart. It was the line she'd keep for the rest of her life, though she never once read it to anyone until she was ninety.

He went out on the Friday. The Tern Rose came back on the Tuesday with her forestay gone and two of the crew bandaged, and nobody was hurt past mending. Gran was on the quay before the gangway was down. Grandad came up the planks with a bag over his shoulder and a few fresh feathers of gull caught in his hair, and he said, you were right about the ground. She said, I know, you daft old thing. And that was the whole of it.

The tide chart's still in the drawer by the back door, folded soft as cloth. The pencilled line reads: you hold me down, I'll go, and you'll be where I come back to.