Black and grey photo of two crossed forearms, each with the script lettering 'To the moon and back', and the lower arm also has a crescent moon.

Matching 'To the moon and back' forearm tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two crossed forearms each carry the phrase 'To the moon and back' in a cursive script with clean, even linework. The lower arm also has a small crescent moon to the right of the text. The photograph is black and white, with a knitted fabric background behind the arms.

Lettering Forearm Moon Crescent moon Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lambing shed is cold enough that your breath hangs between the hurdles. Dad has gone in for the tea, so it is only you, the ewe with the torn ear, and the lamp swinging on its hook. You are nine and have been told twice not to touch the afterbirth. The wind bends the ash tree over the yard. Hold the lamp steady, your mum said, and you did, and tonight it is your job again.

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Your grandmother lived in the cottage past the beck, and every Sunday she walked you to the gate and asked how far you loved her. You held your arms out wide. To the moon and back, you said, because that was as far as anything went. She laughed and said the moon was a long way for a girl with cold hands, then drew a thin curve on the frost of the gatepost with one finger, and that was the mark she gave you to keep.

The ewe goes down at half past three. The lamb comes slick and silent, all legs, and you rub it with straw until it sneezes, the way she showed you. Outside the clouds tear open and there it is above the slurry pit, a paring of light no wider than a fingernail. You think of the gatepost, the frost already gone from it by morning. Dad comes back with the tea and watches you rubbing the straw, and says nothing, which is how he says he is proud.

On the walk back across the yard you stop at the gate and draw the crescent in the mist on the rail, one stroke, then another. Under it you write the words in the careful joined hand she taught you, and your breath goes out in one cloud that hangs there a while. The kitchen light is on. Your shadow runs ahead of you across the frozen puddles, long and thin, reaching for the door.