Colour tattoo on a forearm of a princess silhouette in an ornate grey frame, topped by a blue carriage and a heart, with a pink bow below and the script words Once upon a dream above.

Silhouette in ornate frame on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A black silhouette of a woman in profile sits inside an ornate grey oval frame with scrollwork, a blue carriage and small red heart above it, and a pink bow with dotted chains hanging below. The silhouette is solid black with clean edges, while the frame and bow use grey shading and soft colour fills. The script words Once upon a dream arc across the top of the design on a forearm photographed against a textured grey blanket.

Neo-trad Forearm Silhouette Frame Bow Heart Script Chain Princess

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pring brought the frame in a shoebox wrapped in a tea towel, and would not let me lift it out until she had told me its history. Her aunt had found it at a house clearance in Margate in 1961, tucked behind a wardrobe that smelled of camphor. The silhouette inside was cut from black card, the glass long gone, and someone had painted a pumpkin-blue carriage above it and hung a pink bow beneath, the colour of a boiled sweet.

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I gave the scrollwork three evenings. The gesso came away in flakes like pastry, and under the grey paint I found a second oval scratched into the wood, fainter than the first, with a line of ink bled into the grain: a date, and the word tomorrow, underlined twice. Whoever cut the card had expected to be put away quickly.

On the Thursday the bow came loose between my fingers. Behind it was a pencilled note folded to the size of a stamp, in a looping hand: Don't keep her framed. Let her turn round. I laughed, then I didn't, and I sat with it on the bench until the kettle went cold.

I did not hang it back on the wall. I eased the card out, turned it a quarter circle so the profile faced the window, and glued the bow on the reverse where the light could reach it. Mrs Pring collected the frame on Saturday and held it up to the glass of the shop door. "She's looking at the street now," she said, and for once she did not ask what I had charged her.