Two small black serif lettering tattoos on the ankles, reading create on the left and yourself on the right, shown above pale pink sneakers on wooden steps.

Create and yourself words on both ankles

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two small black words sit on the inner and outer ankle area of each leg, with create on the left ankle and yourself on the right. The lettering uses a thin, typewriter-style serif with even black ink and clean edges. The shot is taken from behind, with dark cuffed jeans, pale pink trainers and wooden steps framing the two words.

Lettering Ankle Word Text Quote

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pell's Remington had been sitting on my bench since March, its ribbon gone the colour of weak tea. Nobody in Ramsgate used typewriters any more except the council and a widow who wrote to her son in Perth every Sunday. When his letters started coming back unopened, she brought the machine in and asked if I could make it strike clean one last time.

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I cleaned the type bars with a brass brush and a drop of paraffin, then fitted a new ribbon and rolled a blank sheet under the platen. The letters came up thin and even, each serif neat as a ladder rung. Caught in the rollers, I found an old carbon with two words pressed through it, hard enough to dent the paper: create and yourself. No full stop. The e in yourself sat a fraction low because that bar had been bent for years.

I asked her about it when she came back on Friday. She said Frank had typed them on his last afternoon at the depot, too tired to write a proper letter and too stubborn to say anything softer. She had kept the carbon in the drawer under the keys ever since, and had never once taken it out.

She paid me in coins, counting them onto the counter one at a time. Then she tucked the machine under her arm, pulled a fresh sheet from her handbag, and sat on the bench outside to type. Through the shop window I could hear it, click by click, the little bell at the end of each line ringing out over the wet pavement.