Close-up of a fine line script tattoo reading Bruised But Never Broken in dark ink across the upper back near the shoulder.

Script quote Bruised But Never Broken on a shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the words Bruised But Never Broken written in a flowing cursive script that rises diagonally across the skin. The linework is thin and even, with the ink appearing dark blue-grey and no shading or colour. The text fills most of the frame against a soft, lightly lit background of skin, with a blue object visible in the top left corner.

Lettering Fine line Shoulder Script Quote Word Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Edwin had copied the same line forty times before he understood the mistake was not in his hand. The abbot's letter to the bishop at Ely lay open on the slope of his desk, and the word he had been asked to set down was "bruised", but the ink had thickened in the cold and every stroke came out thin and grey, as though the letters would not quite take. He scraped the nib on the rim of the pot and tried again, slowly, letting the loops of the capitals lean the way the old exemplar leaned.

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Outside, the bell for lauds began and stopped and began again, because the rope-boy had caught his hand on the frame in the dark. Edwin heard the cry through the glass and did not look up. He had been at this desk since before the rain, and the rain had swollen the vellum so the lines wavered like reeds in a ditch. Prior Osric came in with a lamp, stood behind him, and read over his shoulder without speaking.

"The bishop wants it plain," Osric said at last. "Not the old flourishes."

"It is plain," Edwin said. "It is only that it hurts to write it."

The prior was quiet a long while. Then he set the lamp down and laid one dry finger beside the last word. "Then write it as it hurts. Bruised, but not broken. The bishop will know which of us had the worse winter." He went out, and Edwin sat with the pen lifted, and then, for the first time that week, let the line run on across the sheet without stopping to correct it.