Black and white photo of the script phrase Dum Spiro Spero tattooed along a forearm, with a metal watch on the wrist.

Dum Spiro Spero script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is shown in a black and white photograph, with the Latin phrase Dum Spiro Spero written in flowing cursive script across the skin. The lettering is in solid black ink with smooth, even strokes and a few open loops. A metal link watch sits on the wrist, and a lace sleeve and pale wooden floor fill the edges of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Latin phrase Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas Pell had lettered boats on Vellan for thirty years, and he could tell a name from across the harbour by the slope of its tails. The Mary Ann Rowe needed repainting before the autumn gales, and the widow who owned her wanted a motto under the bow, something the men would see when they rowed out. She had written it on the back of a tide table in pencil: Dum spiro spero.

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He mixed the black in the shed with linseed and a pinch of lamp soot, then sat with the brush hovering over the wood. Outside, Ada Trenoweth was hanging nets and humming under her breath, out of tune, the way her husband used to. Tomas had known Jack Trenoweth since they were boys. He had gone out in February, and the sea had given back only one oar. Tomas worked the first loop of the D slowly, letting the brush lift at the top of each stroke so the line tapered like breath let go.

By the second word his hand had steadied. He painted Spiro and paused at the capital S, which always caught him, since his old master had said a good S was a gull turning into the wind. When he stood back, the phrase ran the length of the bow in black on white, a little crooked where the planks curved, but legible from the slipway.

Ada came down at dusk and read it with her lips moving. "While I breathe, I hope," she said. "Well. Jack would have said that was a lot of hoping for one boat." Tomas wiped the brush on his apron and said nothing. He thought that hope was the one thing a man could paint on a hull and still expect it to float.