Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo reading 'this too shall pass' along a forearm, with a blurred background.

Script phrase on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a handwritten style phrase, 'this too shall pass', in thin black linework running diagonally along the forearm. The lettering is even and uses a delicate, slightly slanted script with some letters joined. The skin is pale and the background is softly out of focus, keeping attention on the text.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Phrase Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walter, the water came over the Kettle Road on Tuesday night and took the Hallams' hen house, two hens, and the good ladder with it. Dad stood at the sluice until dawn with the lamp in one hand and a shovel in the other, and he would not come in to eat. I have started this letter four times because each time I want to tell you the place is ruined, and it isn't. Not yet.

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Mrs Pell from the chapel came round with a loaf and a card she keeps tucked in her hymn book. Her husband wrote the words out for her in 1944, when he was waiting in a field in Italy for orders that didn't come for a month. The card says this too shall pass, in his slanted pencil, with the joined letters that were always hard to read. She said it to me the way other women say a recipe. I told her it sounded like a sermon with the sugar left out, and she laughed so hard she had to hold the table.

Dad read your letter at the table this morning, the one about the job in Lincoln. He read it twice and said nothing. Then he picked up his cup and drank the tea cold, which he has never once done in my life.

This afternoon the water started to drop. Walking past the sluice I could see the chalk marks on the gate, the one for 1947 sitting just above the brown line where the flood had been. The lower ones were showing again, one by one, like a row of teeth. I stood there longer than I meant to. Give my love to Margaret and tell her the hens are fine, the three that got out ran straight back to the shed.