Two photographs of a forearm with black lettering tattoos: heart over mind in the top panel, and courage over fear in the bottom panel, both in a typewriter-style font.

Heart mind and courage fear words on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The top photo shows the word heart above the word mind, separated by a short underline, tattooed on the inner forearm. The bottom photo shows courage above fear with the same underline. The black ink is crisp and uniform, the wearer's dark knitted sleeve frames the arm, and the lighting is soft and natural.

Lettering Forearm Heart Courage Fear Word

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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

Miss Ashdown had taught the typing class at the Corn Exchange since the war, and she did not allow mistakes to be rubbed out with ink. 'A typewriter remembers everything,' she said, rapping the carriage with a ruler. Bea Carrow kept her wrists low and her eyes on the keys, though her hands would not stop trembling whenever the bell over the door rang.

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The other girls laughed at the trick Miss Ashdown showed them on the last afternoon before the exam: type a word, backspace to its first letter, then strike the underscore key until the line was solid. It made a neat fraction on the page. Bea typed heart, backspaced, and struck the line. Mind went beneath it. The sheet looked like a sum that had come out right, and she felt foolish for wanting it to mean more.

Her brother Tom had been posted to Malaya and wrote seldom. The letter that came that Thursday said only that the regiment was moving north and that the tea was terrible. Bea folded it into her cardigan pocket and sat through the afternoon with the words pressing under her ribs. On the way home she bought a tin of Ovaltine she did not want and sat on the bench outside the library until the lamps came on in the square.

That night she rolled a clean sheet into the machine, typed courage, struck the line, and typed fear below it. She pinned the page to the kitchen wall beside the calendar. Her mother asked what it was for. 'Only an exercise,' Bea said, and left the light on in the hall so the page could be read from the doorway.