Fine line black script tattoo of a quote framed by flowers and leaves, placed on the upper back over the shoulder blade.

Script quote and flowers on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A handwritten script quote reads across the upper back, with the words you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. A flower and leafy vine frame surrounds the text, with a shaded grey flower cluster at the lower centre and a single open flower at the top. The linework is fine and even, with soft grey shading on the flower cluster and black ink throughout.

Fine line Lettering Botanical Back Quote Script Flower Leaves Vine Frame Star Tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan,

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The ship's cook says the sea off the Falklands has no bottom anyone has ever found, and I have decided to believe him, because it makes the stars over the bow look even more like they've been put there on purpose. Last night the second mate, Halloran, caught me on the forecastle counting them and asked if I'd lost something. I told him I was checking they were all still there. He laughed so hard he had to sit on a coil of rope.

You'll remember the bit in Mum's old book about the vine that grew up the chapel wall in Cley, the one with the little white flower at the top that nobody ever pruned. I keep thinking of it. We're four months out from Liverpool and I have not seen a single tree, not one, only the grey tops of the waves going on and on, so I've started to think of the trees as a sort of promise the land made that it would still be there when we got back. Mr Abbott says that's soft. Mr Abbott has never once looked at a hedgerow in April.

The captain has given me a day ashore at Valparaiso, and I mean to spend it in a shop by the harbour with a man who does skin work with a needle and a pot of soot ink. I have a drawing of a vine in my pocket that I made on the back of a chart. Don't fret. It isn't a sailor's anchor. It has words in it, in your handwriting, copied from the card you slipped in my kit bag. I'll tell you how it looks when I'm home.

Your loving grandson, Edwin