Black fine-line lettering reading a quote, with two small roses and a colour sugar skull tattoo on a thigh.

Quote text and sugar skull on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a black lettering tattoo on skin, with a quote set in a flowing script over several lines beside two small rose outlines. A sugar skull with pink and red accents sits lower on the same limb. The black linework is crisp and even, with the skin tone and soft natural light framing the design against a pale background.

Lettering Thigh Quote Text Rose Sugar skull Skull Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth, the 17.42 has been cancelled again, so I am writing this on the back of a timetable at Crewe, on a bench that smells of wet coats and fried onions. The tea I bought from the kiosk has gone cold beside me, and I have not minded much, because Lourdes behind the counter has been keeping me company with the radio and a tin of sugar roses.

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She gave me one of the little paper skulls they sell for the Day of the Dead, the kind with pink and red painted across the brow like a headscarf. I asked whether it was for sale or for luck, and she said, "Both, love. The dead like sugar and so do the living," and laughed at her own joke until the man at the newspaper stall looked over.

I thought of Gran's sampler, the one that hung over the stairs in Ashby Road for forty years. Red cross-stitch on cream linen: She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. As children we took it for a rule about growing up. Gran never laughed without first checking the kettle and the gas, and I understand now that she was not meant to. The verse was a wish she stitched in the evenings, a little at a time, the way you'd knit a jumper for someone you hadn't met yet.

The tannoy has just called the 19.05, so I am folding this up and pushing it through the box by the ticket barrier. The skull is coming home with me, and it will sit on my windowsill where the sun reaches it at breakfast. Come at Easter. Bring that laugh of yours. I will buy you a sugar rose.