Black cursive lettering tattoo reading "Nothing last's forever" running along the forearm.

Nothing lasts forever script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm carrying a single line of black cursive script that reads "Nothing last's forever". The lettering uses bold, fluid strokes with fine connecting joins, and the ink is solid and sharp against the skin. The forearm fills most of the frame, with a light grey top and a grey cardigan and a dark sofa softly blurred behind it.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit by the proving drawers, Sam, and keep your hands off that tray until it's cool enough to hold. The bread doesn't care how tired you are. My gran used to say the oven was the only honest thing on the street, because it told you the truth about everything you put in front of it.

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There was a baker across the road from her, a man called Lionel Greaves, who had the finest shop on Tanner Lane and a long white board painted over his door. He had it lettered in black, in that swooping hand they used for funeral cards, and it read NOTHING LASTS FOREVER. Customers thought it was gloomy. He said it was good for trade. People who knew they had a short time to eat a thing bought twice as much of it.

Lionel's bread was beautiful and it went stale by Tuesday. My gran's loaves were plain and dense and kept a fortnight, and she never once put a sign up about it. Then one February the board blew off its hooks in a gale and cracked clean across the middle, and Lionel stood in the lane with the two halves in his arms, staring at the words as if they had lied to him.

She took the pieces home that night. In the morning she scraped the paint off the good half and fixed it above her own door with a fresh coat of black. Nobody asked her what it meant. The words were true, she said, which was the trouble with them, and you could only ever be grateful for the bread while it lasted.