Black script lettering reading Nothing is promised with a red lip print below it, tattooed across the upper chest and shoulder.

Script quote and red lip print on collarbone

Lettering · Chest · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the words Nothing is promised in flowing black script, running diagonally from the upper chest towards the shoulder with a looped flourish at the end. Below the lettering sits a solid red lip print, with fine shading in the lines of the lips. The photograph is taken close up at a slight angle, with a thin chain at the neck and a dark top against the skin.

Lettering Chest Shoulder Text Script Quote Lip

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman at Carrow Steps had one rule after the last bell: he would row anyone across the black water for nothing, provided they told him a true thing they had never said aloud. Most passengers paid in coins instead. On a wet March night a girl came down the steps with a folded letter in her gloved hand and did not reach for her purse.

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"Edwin Pell went up to the north mills in September," she said, "and promised he would send for me by spring. It is March. I have written to him every week, and I have kissed the bottom of every page." She held up the sheet. In the lamplight a red mark sat beside her name, the print of her mouth pressed hard into the paper.

"Nothing is promised," said the ferryman, as if he were reading it off a sign. "Nobody in this city has ever been given what the handbill said." He pushed the boat off the stones. She sat on the middle bench with her knees together and the letter in her lap, and she did not cry, which he respected more than tears.

The river took them slowly through the fog. Halfway over she told him her true thing, quietly: she had already bought a ticket for the north train and had not yet decided whether to use it. At the far bank a lamp burned in the window of the mill row, and a man in a flat cap stood beneath it, not waving, only waiting. The ferryman took no coins that night. He left her letter dry in her hand and kept the smudge of red on his oarlock for the rest of his working life.