Close photograph of a fine line black script tattoo reading 'this too shall pass' across the collarbone near the shoulder, with a white top below.

Script quote 'this too shall pass' on collarbone

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the words 'this too shall pass' written in a thin, handwritten-style script across the collarbone and upper chest. The linework is fine and even, in solid black ink, with no shading or added colour. The soft focus on the skin and the white fabric at the bottom of the frame keep the tattoo as the clear centre of the composition.

Fine line Lettering Chest Quote Script Text

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the card tucked inside a rain-spotted timetable, the kind a porter leaves behind when he has had enough of the job and the job has had enough of him. Somebody has pencilled 'this too shall pass' across the back in a hand that slopes like a fence in wind. Lost property, Platform Four, the ticket office says, though nobody claims anything from the bin any more.

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You have worked the late shift at Carrow Junction for eleven winters. You know which trains run ten minutes behind on a Sunday and which ones never run at all. The waiting room clock stopped in March, and you have never got round to winding it, so you measure the night by the 9.14 to Leeds and the sound of the milk churns being rolled onto the van. Tonight there is only the smell of coal smoke and a single woman on the bench with a suitcase tied up in string, watching the rails as if they owe her money.

You cross the platform and offer her the card. She reads it twice, then folds it into her glove. 'My mother used to say that,' she tells you. 'Usually when the kettle was taking too long.'

The 9.14 goes out without either of you. Afterwards you walk the empty platform with your lamp held low, and it occurs to you that the words were never meant for trains. Somebody wrote them down because they needed them. You pocket the timetable, still damp, and go to wind the clock.