Black fine line script reading inhale the future exhale the past, with a flock of birds flying above it on a shoulder.

Script quote and birds on shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black script quote reads inhale the future exhale the past across the shoulder, with a small flock of birds in flight above the text. The linework is thin and even, in solid black ink with no shading. The skin tone is warm and the background is softly blurred, so the tattoo is the clear focus of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Shoulder Bird Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth, I found the box of your father's clocks in the loft last Tuesday, all nine of them stopped at different hours, and I sat on the joists with a torch in my teeth trying to decide which one to wind first. You always said the trick was to start with the one that had been wrong the longest. So I did. It ticked for eleven seconds and then gave up, which I took as a sign from somebody.

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The estate man wants the house cleared by March. He keeps saying it as if March were a door I could walk through. I have stopped arguing with him. I have started, instead, a list of things we never agreed on, and the list is longer than I expected. Whether Mum wanted to be buried or burned. Whether the pear tree by the shed was ours or the council's. Whether you were right to leave on the night of the storm without waking me, which I still hold against you, though I have grown fond of the way I hold it.

Yesterday I drove out past the reservoir and stood where we used to throw bread at the gulls, and a flock of starlings came off the water all at once, turning like one thing, and I thought of your ridiculous line about breathing in whatever was coming and breathing out whatever had been. I thought you were showing off. I think now you were only frightened, the way we both were.

So here is my offer. Come up on the Saturday train. Bring the clock you kept. We will wind the rest together, one at a time, and whatever stops when we are done can stay stopped. I will make the tea too strong, the way you hated, and you will drink it anyway, because you always did.