Black and grey tattoo on the back of a shoulder showing a shaded skull, two roses, scrollwork and script reading Seize the day or die regretting.

Skull, roses and quote on a shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo on the back of a shoulder combines a shaded skull and two roses with flowing scrollwork. Script lettering across the upper back reads Seize the day or die regretting. Soft shading and clean outlines sit against pale skin, with a dark bra strap visible at the lower edge.

Lettering Realism Shoulder Skull Rose Scrollwork Flourish Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now don't you look at me like that, I'm getting to the dancing, I'm getting to it. Sit down and listen. The Mariner's Hall on the front at Hollin Bay had a sign-writer's board over the bandstand, gold on black, and it said Seize the day or die regretting, because old Ned Tarrant who painted it had been jilted by a girl from Scarrow and never got over his own spelling of regret.

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Every Saturday that winter, Ned's brother Albert stood by the cloakroom with a hip flask and a face like a shut gate. He had been asking Doris Pell to dance since the Coronation, and every Saturday she said yes to the fiddler's waltzes and no to him. Albert would watch her spin past with the lamplight catching her good blue shoes, then he would go outside and smoke and tell the gulls his plans.

Then came the last Saturday before the hall was pulled down for flats. The band struck up a slow foxtrot nobody had requested, and Albert did not reach for the flask. He walked straight across the sprung floor, past the sign, past the paper roses Doris's mother had pinned to the pillars, and held out his hand before his nerve could make a fool of him.

Doris looked at that hand for a long while. Then she laughed, the way you laugh when a gull has had your chips, and took it. They danced until the lights went down, and the skull Ned had painted on the cloakroom door as a joke seemed to grin the whole way through.