Fine line black arrow tattoo on the back of a hand, with the lowercase word breathe in lettering on the forearm below it.

Arrow and breathe lettering on a forearm

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small arrow is tattooed in fine black linework across the back of a hand, with the shaft and feathered fletching clearly drawn. Below it, on the inner forearm, the lowercase word breathe followed by a full stop is written in dark ink with simple, even strokes. The photograph is taken outdoors on a light background, with a blurred figure in the distance and a silver ring on one finger.

Fine line Lettering Hand Forearm Arrow Word Breathe Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad taught me the longbow on the spoil heap behind the Welfare, where nothing grew straight because of what the company tipped there. He said the pull was the easy part. The trick was the breath. You let half of it go, held the rest like a full kettle on the hob, and loosed in the small quiet space before your lungs asked for more. He chalked one word on the back of the target board every Saturday, lowercase, with a full stop, so we would not forget it. Breathe.

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I was nineteen the summer the second shaft closed and the lads stopped playing darts because nobody had money for the bar. Mr Ackroyd, who ran the club on a bad knee, put a straw butt by the bowling green and offered a free pint to anyone who could hit gold. Most of the men laughed. I did not. I shot the first morning and the arrow went wide, low and left, and I felt my face go hot in front of the old men on the bench.

Then on the third Thursday of September the cage jammed at the bottom of Hollin Four with my brother Tom on it. For six hours my mother stood at the pit head with her coat over her nightdress and would not sit down. I went to the green at first light because I could not stand in the kitchen any longer. I nocked, drew, and felt the chest-full of air wanting to come out all at once. So I let half of it go, held the rest, and thought about the board.

The arrow went into the gold. Tom walked up the lane at noon, grey with dust and laughing at something nobody had said. I took the chalk from the shed and wrote the word again on the back of the board, because Dad had always done it, and because I had finally understood what it was for.