Black lettering in a typewriter-style font reads have courage and be kind, running diagonally across a forearm in a lettering tattoo.

Have courage and be kind across a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with the words have courage and be kind tattooed in black ink, running diagonally from upper left to lower right. The lettering uses a typewriter-style serif with even, fine strokes and solid black fill, with no shading. The skin tone is pale and the blurred grey pavement in the background keeps the focus on the text.

Lettering Forearm Quote Word Courage Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The landlady at Gull Rock House kept her typewriter under a tea towel, because the sea air got into the keys otherwise. Every Thursday before the lodgers came down, Mrs Pengelly lifted the cloth, rolled a card into the carriage and typed the same four words in capitals she never explained. She left the cards in a fruit bowl by the front door, and nobody took one unless they meant to.

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Dennis Harvey came in October with a suitcase full of bad news and a cough he would not discuss. He ignored the bowl for a week. On the eighth morning the rain had turned sideways and the bus was cancelled, so he picked up a card, read it twice, and put it in his coat pocket beside the letter from the solicitors. Nobody said anything about it at breakfast, which was how things were done at Gull Rock House.

That winter the ribbon began to fade. Mrs Pengelly had a spare in a tin under the stairs, but when she opened it the spool had gone to dust with the damp. She typed on regardless, pressing so hard the letters bit through the card that the words stood out in raised ridges a person could feel with a thumb in the dark.

Dennis left in March, on a clear morning with the gulls going mad over the harbour. He did not carry his suitcase down the hill. He left it in the hall, and folded inside it was a card with one more line typed beneath the usual four words, pressed so deep it had nearly torn the paper: Mind the step on the cliff path.