Black fine-line script tattoo reading 'To live in the hearts you leave behind is not to die' running across a shoulder, with a small outlined heart at the end.

Script quote across the shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a handwritten-style script quote in black ink running diagonally across the upper back and shoulder, reading 'To live in the hearts you leave behind is not to die'. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the letters vary slightly in height and slant. A small outlined heart sits at the right end of the line, and the pale skin and dark background keep the focus on the text.

Lettering Fine line Shoulder Quote Script Heart Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gather in closer, you lot, and mind the guy ropes. No, the old organ hasn't died yet, though it wheezes like it might. Sit down. This is the one about Ada Penhallow and the gallopers.

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Ada painted the horses on Crane's Gallopers every winter in a damp shed behind the Lincoln showground. Each one got a new mane, a new glare, and a wink if the paint allowed. When her father, who ran the organ and swore at it daily, went into the ground at Boston, she couldn't lift a brush for a month. Silas Crane, who had never said a soft word in his life, walked her out to the field at dusk and sat her on an upturned crate.

'To live in the hearts you leave behind is not to die,' he said, reading it off the back of a playbill, because he never trusted his own memory. 'That's not a poem, girl. That's a job description. Your dad's got work to do, and you're the only one who knows where he's been stationed.'

She went back to the shed the next morning. On the last grey horse, the one with the cracked mirror on its saddle, she painted a small outlined heart, no bigger than a thumbprint, right where the lamplight falls. Nobody asked her to. Nobody has ever found it except the children who sit close enough to see. Right then, who wants the next ride? Mind your hats, and hold on to the brass.