Black script tattoo reading And this too shall pass on the side of a torso, with two hands resting against the skin.

Script quote on the side of the torso

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a thin black script tattoo reading And this too shall pass, running horizontally across the side of the torso. The lettering is in a fine, flowing hand with soft grey shading where the strokes thicken. Two hands, with pale nail polish, cradle the skin around the tattoo against a dark background, and the image is in warm, natural light.

Lettering Ribs Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Hartley & Sons Travelling Fair had wintered in a field outside Lincoln for six weeks, and by March the paint on the dodgems had gone to chalk. I was the only one left who could still letter a straight line, so Mrs Sayers, who owned the roundabout and most of the grudges, sent me up the ladder with a pot of gold leaf and a sable brush.

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The words she wanted were on a card in her handbag, copied out in her late husband's hand before he went through the ice on the Witham. "And this too shall pass," I read aloud, and asked whether it was meant for the fair or for her. She said it was for the horses, which had been sold off one by one since the autumn, and that I was to mind my spelling and not my manners.

I worked the script along the canopy in the grey light of that last week, tapering the downstrokes so they thickened where the wind pushed at the canvas. Each letter took longer than the one before. Halfway through the T my hand started to shake, so I came down and sat on the caravan step with my palms pressed flat on my knees until the cold went out of them.

When the fair pulled out in April the canopy was rolled and stowed, and the sign went with it into the dark of a lorry. Years later I passed a stall on the Skegness front and saw the same curling letters on a strip of faded bunting, half of them gone to rain. Somebody had kept it. I stood there until the man behind the counter asked if I wanted a candyfloss, and I said yes, and ate it looking at the words.