Black and white photo of a black lettering tattoo on a person's upper back, a quote in typewriter-style text reading Even the moon, master of the sea, illuminator of the night, has her craters.

Moon quote lettering on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a person's upper back and shoulder, with long dark hair falling over the left side. The tattoo is a four-line quote set in a bold typewriter-style serif, in solid black ink with crisp edges. The soft black and white composition keeps the focus on the text, which sits across the shoulder blade area against plain pale skin.

Lettering Back Quote Moon Sea Text Typewriter font

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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

You are the only one on the fair who still owns a typewriter, so on Monday the sign-painter's boy brings you his cards to tidy. This week's is for the moon booth at the far end of the midway, a brass telescope bolted to a packing crate, and the card reads Even the moon, master of the sea, illuminator of the night, has her craters. Gaffer Teague wants the last line gone. He says the punters pay a penny to see something perfect, and craters look like dirt on the lens.

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You sit under the awning with the old Imperial and a sheet of cream card, thinking about Teague's mother, who ran that booth before him and once told you the moon was the only thing on the fair that never packed up and left. You type the line as it was written. You have been the one retyping other people's lines since you were nine, but your fingers will not quite manage the lie. Each capital jumps a little on this machine, the way it always has.

That night, after the last lamps on the waltzers have died, you carry the card up to the booth and set it in the frame yourself. The moon hangs over the dodgems, lumpy and grey, and you put your eye to the brass and go looking for what the card promises. You find them along the edge where the light falls short, a dozen dark pocks, each one a small shadow someone once decided was worth mentioning.

In the morning Teague takes one look at the card, opens his mouth, and shuts it again. A girl in a yellow coat stands at the eyepiece for a long time. Then she tells her father the moon has been out in the weather, and that it is the best thing she has seen all week. Her father pays the penny anyway.