Back view of a fine line black script tattoo reading everything in my life happens for a reason, placed across the upper back between the shoulder blades.

Script quote across the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph from behind shows a small handwritten script tattoo reading everything in my life happens for a reason, set horizontally across the upper back. The lettering is thin, even fine line work in black ink with a slightly flowing, cursive character. The skin tone is pale and the background is a soft, neutral wall, with the subject's dark hair and a grey speckled top with a cut-out back framing the tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Back Script Quote 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

The ink has already smudged where your thumb held the envelope against the cold, so you carry it out to the lambing shed rather than leave it propped on the Aga. Frost has furred the gate latch and the yard is the colour of old pewter. Across the top field Dafydd is shouting about a ewe that won't stand, and you should go to him, but the letter is open in your hand and the handwriting is your father's, sloping forward as if it cannot wait to be read.

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He never wrote more than a line when he was alive. Milk's gone off. Mind the bull. This one runs down the page in a loose, looping hand, the letters joined like wire strung between fence posts. It says the lease on the east parcel has gone to the Marlow boys, that the barn roof held through the gales, and that the grey mare will foal before the thaw. Near the bottom the pen stops and starts again: everything in my life happens for a reason, and I think you should know that I believe it of you.

Dafydd is kneeling in the straw when you reach him, the lantern hung from a nail and his sleeves rolled to the elbow, steam rising off his arms. The ewe rolls her eyes at you and gives up a lamb that is slick and still. You rub it with sacking the way your father showed you, harder than feels kind, until it coughs and shakes its head at the world. Dafydd laughs, sudden and wet, and asks what the letter says. You tell him about the mare and the roof and the lease, and leave out the last line, because it is yours.

Outside the light is going blue over the hedges. You fold the pages into your coat, where the paper keeps the warmth of your body, and cross the yard with the wire gate singing under your hand. Behind you the lamb finds its feet on the cold boards, wobbling and certain, and you keep walking towards the house with the words pressed against your ribs.