Two photographs: black script reading hakuna matata with small birds on a foot, and a black mermaid silhouette with small fish on a wrist.

Script and birds on a foot, mermaid on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left photograph shows a bare foot with fine black script reading hakuna matata, with several small black birds in flight around the lettering. The right photograph shows a solid black mermaid silhouette with two small black fish or birds below it on a wrist or forearm. Both tattoos are in black ink on pale skin against plain backgrounds.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Other Script Lettering Bird Mermaid Fish Silhouette Foot Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The geese went over at first light, low enough that I could hear their wings, and I stood in the yard with the milk pail thinking of you saying they never once looked back. The frost has got into the top field again. Dad says the ewes will lamb early if this holds, and he says it as though it were my fault, though I have only been home three weeks and the weather has never once asked my opinion.

Mum has taken to saying the phrase over the kettle, the one she picked up from a seed catalogue written by a man in Nairobi. Hakuna matata, she says, means no worries, and she says it the way she used to say grace, quick and under her breath. I have not told her the words look like something a child would copy from a cereal box. I told her the birds were a good idea. She agreed. She said somebody ought to be going somewhere.

Write back and tell me about the city. Tell me whether the trains still run late and whether you still walk home by the canal. I keep thinking of the morning you left, how the wind took the gate clean off its hinge and you laughed and said the farm was finally trying to get rid of us both.

The gate is fixed now. I did it myself on Sunday with Dad's old drill. Come at Easter if you can, and bring your boots, because the lane is worse than you remember.

Love, Jo