Black and grey lettering tattoos on a man's upper arm and forearm, including the words Yesterday, May and Friday and the number 3, shown beneath a white t-shirt sleeve.

Handwritten words and a number on an arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a close view of a person's arm below a white t-shirt sleeve, with several black ink words and a number tattooed across the upper arm and forearm. The lettering is hand-drawn and uneven, with partly cropped words including Yesterday, May and Friday, and a single numeral 3 sitting between them. The image uses cool, muted tones against a plain grey concrete wall, with the ink appearing in black and grey only.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the 3 bus has gone past the depot twice tonight and nobody on it has paid a fare, so I have taken to writing in the shelter on Carrow Road where the strip light buzzes like a wasp. Mr Okonedo gave me a stub of carpenter's pencil and a sheet headed Lost Property, and said that if I could not remember the days I would have to write them down in the order they happened, or the council would sell the lot at auction. I wrote Yesterday first, because it is the one everyone loses. Then Friday, the night the rain came sideways over the viaduct and the drivers sat with their engines running and their doors open so the cold would wake them.

Keep reading

After Friday I could not manage the rest, so I wrote May, which is the month you were born in and the only word I have never got wrong. The numeral came last, pressed hard, because a conductor on the 3 once told me that three is how many stops it takes to get anywhere worth going. I have not checked that. I have only ever checked the timetable, which lies about the rain.

When the first bus came round at twenty to five, its headlamps swept the shelter and I saw the sheet had blown into the gutter. I did not chase it. I said the words back to myself under my breath, in the order I had written them, and they were enough to tell me where I had left the depot keys.

Love, Dad.

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