Back of a woman's neck with her hair in a bun, showing a fine line black script tattoo reading Stay Gold running vertically down the neck.

Stay Gold script on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A rear view of a person with dark hair tied up in a bun, showing a vertical script tattoo that reads Stay Gold down the centre of the neck. The lettering is thin, flowing and drawn in black ink with a fine line. The plain cream background keeps the focus on the tattoo and the bare skin around it.

Lettering Fine line Neck Script Lettering Neck Hair bun

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The lamp in the galley has gone sour with the damp, so forgive the smudges. We are four weeks out from Valparaíso and the sea has been flat as a pewter plate since Tuesday, which the bosun says is the worst sign there is. He says the calm always comes before the cold. I have decided to believe him only on the days I want an excuse to be miserable.

You will laugh, but the thing I keep thinking about is the orchard behind Aunt Ida's, where we ate the early windfalls until we were sick. You said the first leaves of spring were the only gold that lasted a whole morning before it turned to plain green. I told you that was nonsense, and you pushed me into the ditch. I was wrong. Everything I have seen since has been green or grey or the brown of hawsers, and I have started to measure a day by how long it takes to forget what the orchard smelled of.

Last night, on the dog watch, the second mate found me sitting on the hatch with my knife and a bit of driftwood, trying to carve your name and failing. He took it off me without a word, turned it to the lantern, and said his mother used to tell him that a thing you say often enough becomes a thing you do. Then he went below. I have been thinking about that all day.

So here is my instruction, to both of us. When you walk past Ida's gate in April, look for the first leaves and do not let them go to green in your head before you have properly looked. Stay gold, Nell. I will do the same, on this grey sea, and we will compare notes when the anchor finally drops.

Your loving brother, Tom