Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo reading everything happens for a reason across the inner forearm.

Handwritten quote on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a forearm with the words "everything happens for a reason" written in thin black script across the skin. The linework is delicate and even, with slightly uneven letter spacing that gives it a handwritten feel. The background shows a knitted cream sleeve, a gold wristwatch and a small cross bracelet, all out of focus, with the tattoo in sharp focus at the centre.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Quote Script Handwriting Word

Find an artist for this

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

The slate hung beside the lamp room door at Hollin Colliery, and every morning before the cage went down, old Agnes Dunmore chalked the same line across it in a hand as thin as thread. Nobody asked her to. The men stopped on their way past, read it with their lamps swinging at their hips, and went down to the seam without comment, which was how the village liked its comfort.

Keep reading

Agnes had come to the lamp room the year the Ridley seam flooded, when her brother Tom went down on the Tuesday and did not come up. She never said why she chose those words. Her neighbours guessed she had been given them by the minister, or copied them from a tea caddy, and they argued about it over dominoes in the Miners' Welfare for a decade, until the argument itself became a sort of ritual.

In the winter of the long strike, when the company padlocked the lamp room and the slate was left to the damp, a boy called Joey Fenwick crept in to look at it. He could read only half the letters. He copied the line onto the back of a wage slip in pencil, pressing so hard the lead snapped twice.

Agnes died in March. The first morning after the funeral, Joey came in early, found the slate grey with dust, and wiped it clean with his sleeve. Then he stood there with chalk in his fist, unsure whether the words still belonged to anyone, and wrote them out again, badly, the letters leaning like men coming off shift.