Fine line serif script tattoo on a forearm reading 'i spent my life folded between the pages of books', with an open book behind the arm.

Book quote tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black serif script quote runs diagonally along the inside of a forearm, reading 'i spent my life folded between the pages of books'. The thin, even linework and open lettering are shown against a paperback lying open behind the arm, with a blurred colourful cover image at the top of the frame. The ink is solid black with no colour, and the arm fills the centre of the composition.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Quote Script text Book Open book

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bindery on Tanner's Row had one rule older than the gas meter: nobody read a signature before it was sewn. Mr Aske kept it painted in white letters above the guillotine, and for thirty years Nell Corrigan obeyed it, though her fingers were always stained with glue and her eyes always strayed to the first line of whatever passed under her hands.

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The ledger that broke the rule came in a crate from Scarrow Bridge in March. Its endpapers were marbled blue and green, like a bruise going off, and someone had sewn the sections out of order. Nell found herself unpicking waxed thread at midnight, the gaslight hissing, until she reached the ninth section and a folded sheet slid out onto the bench. It was written in a hand she knew from birthday cards and grocery lists, her mother's, and it was dated the year her mother had left the town for good.

The letter was short. It said she had never been good at staying still, that she had kept her life tucked inside other people's stories because it was safer there, and that Nell should not wait at the bindery door for a woman who had already chosen her pages. There was a pressed forget-me-not at the bottom, brown as tea.

Nell read it twice, then folded it along its old crease and tucked it back where it had lain. She sewed the section closed with a neat, even stitch, tied off the thread, and set the ledger on the shelf with its spine turned out, so the next person who came looking would find it exactly as it had been waiting.