Script quote reading to live to learn to love
Lettering · Black and grey · Flash
The image shows a single line of handwritten script reading 'to live to learn to love', with the words joined by long connecting strokes. The linework is smooth and even in solid black ink, with thick and thin strokes that suggest a brush or calligraphy pen. The text sits centred on a plain white background with no body part, shading or colour visible.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Ruth,
Keep reading
They have kept me in the waiting hall at Calais since the morning bus, so I am writing this on the back of the timetable, because the pen the clerk lent me is nearly dry and I do not want to waste the last of the ink on anything but you. The officer with the grey moustache has my papers and has been turning them over for an hour as if the stamps might confess something. Mrs Okafor from the Leeds coach sits opposite, knitting a sleeve that never seems to grow.
Father's tin is in my case, the one with the blue lid. I wrapped it in your old school jumper so the customs dog would not sniff it out. You will laugh, but I kept Mother's sentence in my head the whole crossing: to live, to learn, to love. She wrote it on the inside of the lid when we were girls, in that loopy hand she thought was elegant, and I used to think it was a schoolgirl's boast. Now it seems a plain set of instructions I have only half followed.
The officer has come back. He is saying something about a second interview, and I have stopped being frightened, which surprises me more than him. I will post this from the other side if they let me through, and if they do not, you will know I was learning something else entirely.
Love, Margit
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