Black typewriter-style lettering reading 'breathe.' on the inner wrist and forearm of a person whose hand is raised at the top of the frame.

'breathe.' lettering on the inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the word 'breathe.' tattooed in a black, typewriter-style serif font across the inner wrist, with the full stop at the end. The linework is clean and solid with no visible shading, and the ink is a uniform black against pale skin. The hand sits at the top of the frame on a dark background, with the lettering running horizontally across the lower centre.

Lettering Forearm Breathe Word Typewriter font Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The Olivetti came in on Monday wrapped in a bedsheet, and I knew before I unwrapped it that the 'e' would be sticking. It always is, on machines that have been left in damp garages. I spent all of Tuesday with a pin and a tin of oil, coaxing the little arm back into its groove, and by six o'clock I'd typed the alphabet on a sheet of foolscap just to hear it go. The customer, a Mrs Pardoe from Hove, wanted her late husband's sermons copied out clean before the damp got to them. She paid in coins and didn't stay to watch.

Your mother rang last week. I didn't pick up, which you'll say is typical, and you'd be right. She left a message saying you've been having the bad nights again, the ones where you sit on the edge of the bed counting the floorboards. I don't know what to tell you that a doctor hasn't. I can only tell you what the old printers at the works used to say when a press jammed and the whole floor went quiet: stop, put your hand flat on the bench, and let the air go out of you before you try again.

So I've typed it for you, and I'm sending it in an envelope with the stamp crooked, because I never learned to line up anything that matters. The word is on the top sheet, lowercase, the way you always wrote things, with a full stop because you never trusted a sentence without one. Pin it above the bench or inside the cabinet door, wherever your eye falls when the room starts to close in. Then breathe, and when you can, write back.

Dad