Black script lettering reading Whom then shall I fear on the inner wrist, with black painted nails visible at the bottom of the frame.

Script quote Whom then shall I fear on wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink quote written in flowing script across the inner wrist, set on two lines. The strokes are a fine, even monoline with a little variation in weight, and the lettering is entirely black with no shading. The composition is tightly framed on the wrist and hand, with the fingertips with black nail polish at the lower edge.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Quote Script Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ovens were lit by half past three, which was my job, and by four the flour in the air had settled onto everything I owned. Mrs Okonedo never came in before six, so the bakehouse was mine until then: the slow turn of the proving drawers, the tick of cooling racks, the radio murmuring the shipping forecast to nobody. Above the sink, pinned to the tiles with a dough hook magnet, was a card in her looping hand that said Whom then shall I fear. She had written it the week her husband died, and it had yellowed at one corner from the steam.

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I took it for a hymn at first, the sort you hear in a supermarket at Christmas. She corrected me one morning without looking up from her scoring. It's from the psalm, she said, the one about light. Then she told me she had written it in the margin of every recipe book she owned, and I had never once seen her afraid of anything: not the gas bill, not the health inspector, not the developer who came in with a cheque and a smile and left with nothing.

The February I was left alone with the ovens, the power went at ten to five. The whole street dropped into black, the fridges sighed and stopped, and the dough in its trays had nothing to lean on. I stood in the dark with a torch between my teeth and my hands floured to the wrist, certain I had ruined three days of starter. The rye was already sour on the air.

So I did what she always did. I lit the hob by hand, one ring at a time, and fed the old brick oven split ash until its mouth glowed orange against the wall. By six the window had gone grey over the car park and the first van was reversing outside with its beeper going. The loaves had risen. Mrs Okonedo came through the door, looked at the card above the sink, then at me, and said, well, then. That was all the praise I ever got, and I have never wanted more.