Black and grey photograph of a fine line script tattoo reading there is no one alive who is youer than you, with a small flower line drawing, on the upper back.

Script quote with small flower on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a fine line script tattoo across the upper back, reading there is no one alive who is youer than you over two lines. A small line drawn flower with a stem curls off the end of the text at the right. The image is black and grey, with soft focus on the skin and a dark strap visible at the right edge.

Lettering Fine line Back Script Quote Text Flower Line drawing

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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 are nine the summer the vicarage garden gets a new gate, and you spend the afternoon on your knees among the sweet peas, pretending not to listen to the women at the trestle table argue over the judging. Mrs Pargeter says the dahlias are too tall for the class. Your nan says nothing, which is worse. She is brushing soil from a tin of cards she has been writing since Easter, each one copied out in her slanting biro from the back of a calendar.

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The card she gives you has the line on it, and one word she has circled twice. Youer, she has written, the second word stalling between two others like a car in a lane. You tell her it's wrong. She says it isn't wrong, not for you. Nobody else will ever say it the way you do, she tells you, and that is what the mistake is for. Then she goes back to her deadheading and does not look up, and you understand the conversation is finished.

Years later you find the card in a shoebox under a staircase in a house that is not hers. Your shoulder aches from carrying boxes, and a voicemail is blinking on the counter from someone who wants the paperwork by Friday. You read the line aloud, get to youer, and laugh before you can stop yourself.

You go out to the back step and cut the one stem still flowering in the bed she planted, a small white bloom on a wire stalk. You put it in a jam jar on the windowsill and prop the card against the glass, the circled word facing the room.