Two matching black script tattoos on the inner wrists reading to the moon and back, with a crescent moon and two stars, in a lettering style.

Matching to the moon and back wrist tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two wrists are shown side by side, each with the same black script reading to the moon and back, a large crescent moon and two small stars. The lettering and moon are solid black linework with smooth, even edges, and the stars sit to the right of the crescent. The composition is a close, straight-on view of the wrists with plain light skin tones and no background detail.

Lettering Forearm Moon Crescent moon Star Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the sea's distances in the dark, when the land has gone and only the moon keeps its place. The Marion Rae is four hours past the Dogger line before the first haul, and the deck is slick with the silver of gutted herring. Somewhere behind the horizon Nell is asleep in a house with a broken gate, and you have promised her what you always promise, that you will be home by the Saturday tide.

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She taught you the words when you were small, the two of you lying on a cold lawn counting stars that were not really there. How far, she would ask, and you would stretch your arms wide and say to the moon and back. It was a child's sum with no answer. Now she writes it on the inside of your wrist in blue biro before each trip, and by the third day the letters have softened into a grey smudge that you rub at with your thumb when the nets come up empty.

Skipper Haddow says the trawl is a dud and the cook swears a seal has been at the bait. You haul until your shoulders sing, and the catch comes in glittering and wrong, two skate and a boot. At four the crescent drops behind the cliffs and the fleet's lamps go out one by one, leaving only the two bright points of the Cottage Lights to steer by.

On the quay that morning Nell is waiting with a flask and a face that has not slept either. You hold out your wrist. The biro is nearly gone, but you can still read the curve of the moon. She traces it with one finger, counts under her breath, and says the number is still too small. You tell her it always was.