Black script lettering reading You'll never know dear, how much I love you runs across a bare upper arm.

Script quote on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single line of black cursive script runs diagonally across smooth, tanned skin, with the words spelling out a sentence ending in an ellipsis. The lettering has fine, even linework with little variation in weight, and the ink is dark and clearly defined against the skin. The soft focus and warm light sit around the tattoo, while a grey fabric sleeve and dark clothing frame the lower edge of the image.

Lettering Upper arm Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The post boat comes in on a Tuesday, so you read the letter on the harbour wall at Skarra with the wind snatching at the corners. The hand on the envelope is his, clumsy at the loops, but the sentence on the first page has been copied out twice. The second version is pressed harder into the paper, as if he wanted it to hold.

Keep reading

It is the line he said on the quay the morning the Morna sailed: you'll never know, dear, how much I love you... He never got to the end of it. The horn went off over the top of him and he took the gangway two steps at a time with his cap in his fist. Since then you have been finishing it for him all winter, over the peat smoke, at the sink, in the pew where the hymns run too long and nobody minds.

The page runs out halfway down the second sheet. Below that there is nothing but a pencilled row of dots, carefully spaced, as if he had counted them out and then lost his nerve. Behind you a crate thumps onto the cobbles and a gull argues with the fish van.

You take the stub of pencil from your coat, turn the tide timetable over, and write the only thing the island has ever let you say to the sea: come back and I will let you finish it.