Woman portrait with script on back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large portrait of a woman in profile looks over the shoulder, with one hand raised near her mouth. Handwritten script runs down the left side, and dripping, splattered effects extend from the hand and face. The shading is soft and detailed in black and grey, with pink and red washes adding colour near the hand and lower half.

Realism Back Woman Portrait Face Hand Handwriting Script Drip Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been writing the letter since the windfalls started dropping in the orchard behind the Pearsons' wall, each one landing soft in the long grass. The page is already spotted. Your sleeve is damp where you wiped your mouth, and the ink of the first line has bled into the second: Dear Ruth, I should have said it at the gate.

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You picked the plums from the old tree by the stile, the ones gone purple and soft at the seams, and ate two before you remembered why you had come out here. Juice runs down your wrist now. Each time you lift your hand to your mouth to stop yourself calling her back across the field, you leave another red print on the paper, and the words beneath it turn pink at the edges.

Ruth is at the kitchen window of the farmhouse. You can tell by the glint on the glass. She has been watching since the bell rang for tea. You know what the letter says and what it leaves out. You crossed out the sentence about the orchard twice because it sounded like a poem, and you have never trusted a poem.

You fold the page into quarters, the juice soaking through to the crease, and walk towards the gate. Halfway there you stop, open it again, and write one more line in the margin, small enough to pass for a stain: I meant to come in. Then the wind lifts the top sheet off the wall, and you let it go.