Black and grey fine line tattoo of two music staves with notes above script lettering on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Music staff and script lettering on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo wraps around the inner wrist and forearm, showing two music staves with notes and rests above two lines of cursive script. The script reads partly as "hardest part of" and "is leaving you", with the upper line partly obscured by the curve of the arm. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the photo is taken head-on with the wrist centred and a hand visible at the top of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Music staff Musical note Script Lettering Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The saloon piano had been out of tune since the Bay of Biscay, so Teodor Vance spent the first watch with his ear pressed to its lid, listening for the flat notes the way a doctor listens to a chest. He copied the tune onto the back of a spoiled chart with a nib borrowed from the purser. The five lines wandered as the ship rolled, so the crotchets climbed the page like gulls trying to hold station. His sister had sung the melody on the Liverpool quay the morning he signed on, badly, laughing at herself, and he had promised to write it down so she could hear it from Halifax.

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By the third night the figures were sound. The purser wanted it for the captain's dinner, a waltz, he said, something to make the widows dance. Teodor refused. He would play it once, at the end of the crossing, when they raised the Mersey and the ship's company stood on deck with their caps in their hands. Until then the last bar stayed blank, a space on the page he kept folding shut each night and opening again each morning.

On the final line he wrote the closing chord, then drew a rest above it, a small black mark that asked for patience. The ship's bell struck eight somewhere forward, and the rest of the watch came up the companionway yawning and cold. Teodor blotted the chart, tucked it inside his coat, and went below to tell the piano that it would be played soon enough.