Black line drawing of a circle with an inner circle, a solid dot, arcs and the lettering 'You will not break me' beneath, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Circle emblem with 'You will not break me'

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a large circle enclosing a smaller circle with a solid dot near its centre, with two thick arcs rising from the outer circle and a set of short lines below. The handwritten phrase 'You will not break me' sits beneath the drawing. The work uses uniform black linework on a white background with no shading or colour.

Geometric Circle Dot Arc Lettering Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By half past one the dial is in pieces across the bench, and the rain on the skylight has settled into the steady sort that means nobody will climb the stairs. You have the outer ring off, the two iron arms that carry the hour hand lying beside the lamp like tongs, and the small brass boss at the centre that old Ashby never let anyone else touch. The shop smells of oil and cold tea. Ashby has been dead eleven years, yet you still half hear his cough on the landing when the building settles.

Keep reading

He scratched the words into the case back with a bradawl, the letters small and leaning, the way a man writes when his hand shakes from the cold or from something worse. You turn the brass over under the lamp and read them again. The council man came in March asking whether the tower could come down, and you said no before you had thought about it, which surprised you more than him. It was the first time in years you had said anything to anyone that was not about gears.

So you seat the boss, drop the pin, and check the teeth one by one with a loupe until your eyes ache. Near four the hour hand moves a fraction under your thumb, stiff as a gate, and then it moves again, true. You close the case and press the catch shut.

At six the tower strikes, a minute late, and you let it. Down in the street a man in a wet coat stops on the pavement and looks up at the face, though he cannot possibly read the time from there. You keep your thumb on the back of the case a little longer, feeling the scratched words under the skin of your palm.