Black and grey lettering tattoo of a line of text on the inner forearm, flanked by a moth motif on each side.

Quote with moths on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of an inner forearm with a multi-line quote set in a typewriter-style serif font. Two moth-like ornaments with geometric wing patterns sit at either end of the lower lines. The ink is solid black with clean edges, and the image is shot straight on against grass.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Moth Typewriter font

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the kettle's only just gone off. You want the story of Marta at the Vlasik crossing, or would you rather stand there checking your watch? Good, then listen. The barrier there was a striped pole, and the hut behind it was no bigger than a bread oven, with a single bulb hung over the desk. Every night that bulb dragged moths out of the dark, grey ones with wings like folded paper fans, and they bumped against the glass until morning.

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Marta caught them in a jam jar, pressed them flat between blotting paper and pinned them in a ledger beside the stamps. Travellers handed over their papers and she would look up over her spectacles and ask, 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precise life?' The customs men thought she had gone soft in the head. A lorry driver told her he planned to sleep until Tuesday. A schoolboy said he would sell his bicycle and buy a boat.

One February a man with a violin case came through, thin as a coat hanger, asking only to be stamped through to the coast. She asked her question. He said he planned to play for a woman who had stopped listening years ago, and he did not know if she was still alive. Marta stamped his papers, then took a moth from her jar and set it on his sleeve. 'Then go and play badly enough that she has to come to the window,' she said.

When she retired, the new officer found the ledger full of pinned wings and the lamp still burning, though the hut had been locked for a month. On the sill sat one live moth, wings folded like a pair of compasses, and I suppose it is still sitting there, waiting for someone to answer.