Fine black script tattoo reading "i live to let you shine" across the top of a foot near the ankle, in a warm sepia photo.

Script quote on the top of a foot

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A bare foot rests on a floral patterned fabric, with a line of black cursive script tattooed across the top near the ankle. The lettering uses a fine, slightly uneven stroke with lowercase letters and a joined, handwritten feel. The photo is warm and sepia-toned, so the ink appears dark brown-black and the composition centres on the foot and ankle.

Lettering Ankle Script Quote Word Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Rook had lit the gas lamps on Sallow Quay for thirty-one years, and the fishermen coming in off the night tide never once saw her hurry. She climbed each iron post at dusk with her brass pole over one shoulder and a tin of spare mantles tucked under her arm, and by the time the boats nosed past the breakwater, the whole harbour road lay strung with gold.

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Her grandson Joseph had no interest in lamps. He drew on the backs of chandlery invoices, gulls and a cat asleep on a coil of rope, and most mornings Ada found a fresh sketch folded in her apron pocket. Once it was the lamp itself, drawn so carefully she could see the flame leaning in the draught.

The February gale took the slipway wall, and afterwards Joseph went down to the water with a borrowed lantern and sat on the wet stones until the light turned grey. Ada found him there, frozen, a notebook open on his knee. On the inside cover, in his joined-up hand, he had written a line copied from a card in the church porch and spelled wrong: i live to let you shine. When she asked what it meant, he said it was meant for the lamps. She told him it was the only sensible thing she had read all week.

Next dusk she handed him the pole. He climbed the first ladder badly, the brass knocking against the iron, and she stood below with one hand on the rail, watching the wick catch. Along the quay the road came up gold, post by post, until he reached the top and the light went out over the water and touched the boats one by one.