Black serif lettering reading take a breath and be strong across a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Take a breath and be strong on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a two-line quotation tattooed across the upper back, with the text reading take a breath and be strong. The lettering uses a clean, solid black serif typeface with even, bold strokes and no shading. The image is in black ink only, with a patterned bra strap and a light blue fabric visible at the edges of the frame.

Lettering Back Text Quote Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The telegram had been sitting on the hall table since breakfast, propped against the tea caddy where Maud had put it so she would not have to look at the envelope every time she passed. Mrs Ashdown's name was typed across the front in capitals, and the boy from the post office had already pedalled back up the hill, whistling, which Maud thought unforgivable.

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Upstairs the bath was running. Mrs Ashdown had come down three times since Easter asking whether the post had come, and each time Maud had said no, which had been true until eleven o'clock. She did not open it. Opening other people's bad news was a thing her mother had forbidden, so instead she carried up a tray with two rounds of toast and the good marmalade, and knocked twice.

The lodger came to the door in a borrowed dressing gown, her hair combed flat with wet fingers. Maud held out the envelope. Mrs Ashdown read it standing, then sat down on the top stair as if someone had cut a string. Below the window the sea went on grinding at the shingle, the same as it had all week, and the gulls outside argued over the bins.

Maud sat beside her and said nothing. After a while she took the little card from her apron pocket, the one the vicar had left for the harvest supper, and wrote on the back in pencil. She pressed it into the damp hand. Mrs Ashdown turned it over and read it aloud in a flat voice: take a breath and be strong. Maud picked up the toast, buttered it, and held it out until the hand let go of the card and took the bread instead.