Black lettering design on a plain white background reading BREATHE in spaced capitals above the handwritten phrase this isn't the end, with no body part shown.

Breathe and this isn't the end lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink lettering design on a plain white background. The word BREATHE is set in widely spaced capital letters above a handwritten script line reading this isn't the end. The thin, uneven strokes are solid black with no shading, and the composition is centred with generous white space around the text.

Lettering Breathe Quote Script Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the glass on Kirkgate was still wet when I started, so I had to wait under the awning with the brush behind my ear until the size went tacky enough to take gold. It is half past two now and the street is empty apart from a taxi idling by the bins. I did the capitals first, the way Dad taught us, wide and even, with a gap between each letter you could slide a fag paper through, so they read slowly when the shop lights come on at six.

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The line underneath was not my idea. Mrs Okafor came out in her dressing gown with a tub of cold rice and asked for something small, something she could read from the bus stop. Her husband ran the laundrette for thirty years and died in March. She had a card in his hand that said this isn't the end, and she wanted it copied exactly, so I sat on the step with the photograph of the card and worked it letter by letter. He ran his t's up like fishing line. I got the first one right and the second one wrong.

The thin stroke wobbled on the d and I nearly wiped the whole thing, but she was coming back at six and I didn't have it in me to start again. Instead I stood in the road and watched the streetlight catch the wet black ink. At half six she came out, read it twice with her lips moving, and said he would have hated the spacing. Then she laughed, properly, the way you laugh at a man who is no longer there to argue.

I've left my good sable in the van's glovebox for you, since you always said I never finish anything. Come up at the weekend and see it in the daylight. Bring your own brushes, and we'll see who can keep a line straight at night.