Several forearms and wrists show matching black script tattoos reading "to life.", with a small heart symbol on one arm and a colour flower tattoo on another.

Matching "to life" script tattoos on forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Several people's forearms and wrists are shown close together, each carrying a small black script tattoo reading "to life." One arm also has a small "<3" heart symbol in black. A partly visible colour flower tattoo with green leaves and blue and pink petals sits on a lower arm, and the photo is lit softly with a plaid fabric in the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, the galley on the Harriet Lowe is the warmest room aboard and I have mostly stopped complaining about it. Cook says a ship runs on three things: bread, tea and whatever the men are too tired to argue about. This month it has been the toast. Every Sunday, once the last plate has gone out, the four who signed on together at Grimsby stand at the mess table and say the same two words, "to life," and then knock back whatever rum Cook has been hiding from the purser.

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I asked Teddy Marr why they bothered. He is the youngest, all elbows and questions, and he told me that in March the Harriet lost her mainsail in a squall off Flamborough. Two men went over the side and came back up on a line, one of them blue as a mussel shell. Nobody had thought to say anything at the time, so the four of them decided to say it every week instead, until it stopped sounding like a joke and started sounding like a bearing they could steer by.

Last Sunday I brought the kettle through and found them arguing over who had the worst handwriting in the group, because Teddy had got his pen out and was passing it round for a fresh bit of ink. Cook had his cup raised and the lamp caught the little blue and pink flower he keeps inked near his wrist, which he swears was his mother's idea and not his. Nobody mentioned the storm. They just clinked their tin cups and said it, and I said it too, though I was only holding the teapot.

Write back soon and tell me the bakery has stopped burning the rolls. Your loving sister, Ada.

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