Fine line black script reading "this too shall pass" across the outer forearm, shown on light skin against a blurred background.

"This too shall pass" script on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with the phrase "this too shall pass" written in thin black handwritten script, running diagonally from the wrist side toward the elbow. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black on pale skin. The background is out of focus, keeping attention on the lettering.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Phrase Handwriting

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry from the mainland is late again, so you sit on an upturned creel at the end of the slip and read the letters your grandmother kept in a biscuit tin. Her handwriting leans forward as if it is walking into a wind. Most of the letters are about gulls, the price of coal, and the minister's wife and her hats. The last one is shorter, written on the back of a tide table for Eilean Dubh, and it says only that the Morag Rose went out in the grey and the wind dropped, and that you should not be frightened by how quiet the house has become.

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You turn the tide table over. The printed hours for March run in neat columns, and in the margin beside the thirtieth she has written three words in pencil, then crossed them out and written them again more firmly: this too shall pass. You had always taken it for one of those things people stitch onto cushions, the sort of sentiment the church ladies kept in a drawer. Now it reads more like a note to herself, a schedule, the kind of thing you write down so you can check it against the sea.

The Morag Rose rounds the point with her horn sounding twice, and you can see the deckhand, a boy with a red knitted hat, lifting a hand to the shore. You fold the letter back into its envelope and wedge the tin under your arm. The tide is already turning, the way it always does without asking anybody's permission.

You stand, walk down the last of the slip, and wave back. The water slaps the stones, and for once you do not count the minutes until something changes.