Black fine line script reading Lance and Autumn, each inside an outlined heart, on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Script names in two hearts on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the word Lance in looping script above a small outlined heart, with Autumn in similar script inside a second heart set below and to the right. The linework is thin and even in solid black ink, with no shading. The skin is fair and the background is out of focus, so the design sits clearly at the centre of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Back Heart Name Script word Outline

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gulls have followed the Mary Ellen out past the breakwater, and you are still hauling the second string of pots when Lance shouts from the wheelhouse that the swell is getting up. You don't look round. You keep your gloves on the rope and the brine running down your wrists, because the skipper's voice carries across the deck and you have learned the sea does not wait for anyone who stops to think.

Keep reading

He has talked about nothing else since Tuesday. Autumn at the net shed on the east quay, Autumn who laughs at his jokes before he finishes them, Autumn who will have him when the season ends, he says, if he can stop smelling of bait long enough to ask. You nod and say the right things. You have known him since you were boys sharing a bunk in the cold loft above the fish market, and you know the look he gets when he is about to be a fool for love.

The next pot comes up heavy and wrong. Crabs, a tangle of weed, and a tin biscuit box wedged in the mesh, its lid scratched with two hearts and two letters, L and A, the ink gone grey with years of salt. Lance goes quiet when he sees it. Inside, under a fold of oilcloth, is a pressed sprig of heather and a note in faded pencil: meet me at the slipway where the two hearts meet, Michaelmas, midnight, and do not be late. The date is thirty-one years gone.

Lance reaches for it. You close your hand over the tin first, surprised at yourself, and slide it into the inside pocket of your oilskin where it presses warm against your ribs. The swell lifts the stern and the gulls wheel away towards the harbour. You will take it to the net shed yourself tomorrow, and you will watch her face while she reads the pencil, and you will not tell Lance until you have seen what the old words do to her.