Black lettering tattoo of a four-line quote across the upper back, set in a serif typeface on a shoulder blade.

Quote tattoo across a shoulder blade

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photo of bare skin on the upper back showing a four-line quote tattooed in black ink in a serif typeface, running diagonally from left to right with the lines stepping down. The lettering has clean edges and solid black fill, with some softness from the photo focus. The background is blurred greenery and a light wall, and a white garment sits at the lower edge of the frame.

Lettering Back Quote Text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tom, you will have read my last letter twice by now and still not believed the bees have swarmed into the chestnut above Pennick Lane. Don't go up there alone. Take Ada's ladder, the veil with the torn cuff, and for pity's sake leave the good boots by the door where I can see them.

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I know what you wrote on the back of the envelope, the bit you hoped I'd skip. Your mother kept a line from her own mother pinned above the stove, and I have it by heart: I told you to be patient, fine, balanced, kind. She said it to me the spring your grandfather went into the cold and I was too angry to hear it. I'm saying it to you now because my knees have given up on ladders, and I would rather you heard it from a person than from the wind in the larches.

So wait until dusk, when the foragers are home and the cloud has gone quiet. Brush them toward the skep with the goose feather, never the hand. If a sting lands, don't swat; step back, breathe, and let the cold water in the bucket do its work. Cut the comb with the bread knife and leave a third of it for them, the way Ada always did, even when the winter was hard.

Then come down and tell me how it went. The mill people will still be hiring in the autumn, and I'll not stop you going, but I'd like you to go with honey in your coat pocket and the sense to know which way the wind is blowing. Bring the blue-rimmed bucket back when you're done. I've left the kettle on.