Dark script quotation tattoo across a woman's upper back, shown from behind with her shoulder and a blue top visible.

Script quotation across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's upper back shows a block of handwritten-style text in dark ink, set in several centred lines that run across the shoulder blades. The lettering uses fine, even strokes with a slightly italic character and small variations in weight. The skin tone is warm and the image is framed from behind, with a blue top at the edge and framed pictures on the wall in the background.

Lettering Back Quote Script Text Handwriting

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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

Sit down, you're blocking the lamp, and I haven't finished. No, leave the stamp where it is. The river wants a story before it lets anyone across, that's the custom here, so listen.

Keep reading

Old Teodor kept a green lamp in the window of the toll house on the far bank. Every night he lit it, and every night the ferries pulled towards it through the fog, and every night the current shoved them back downstream a hand's width further than before. He told my mother that a man is a boat rowing against water. You don't win. You keep your oars in and your eyes on the light.

The winter his wife crossed for good, he rowed out with no lamp at all and sat in the middle of the channel until the sun came up grey over the hills. People said he had gone soft. He came back at dawn, soaked to the knees, and said tomorrow he would row harder, reach farther, and one fine morning the bank would simply be nearer than it looked.

He never reached it. Nobody does, I suppose. But the lamp is still green, and I still light it, and you are going to sit there with your stamp and let the next lorry through before the light goes.