Black and white photo from behind of two ankles, each with a small handwritten script word in black ink, reading keep on the left and running on the right, in a lettering style on the ankles.

Keep and running script on both ankles

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the backs of two ankles and heels, with the feet resting on a wooden floor in front of a skirting board. Each ankle carries one word in black handwritten script, with the word keep on the left ankle and running on the right. The black and white image is evenly lit and the lines are clear and smooth.

Lettering Ankle Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sports hall still smells of floor polish, and someone has pinned the old house-points board beside the buffet table. You find your name in the Ashgrove column before you find anyone you recognise, which tells you that you have come too early. Dana is already at the urn, shoulders squared the way they were on the cross-country course, pretending not to watch the door.

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Thirty years ago, Mr Pargeter used to bellow the same two things from the top of Cragg Lane: keep it going, and keep it running. You hated him for it. Dana said they were the only useful words he ever gave anyone, and then she ran ahead, the pair of you a hundred metres apart by the stile, because neither of you would be the first to slow. Behind the chippy afterwards she told you she was leaving for Toronto. You said nothing at all, so she scribbled on the back of a fixtures card what she thought you should do with yourself, and that was the last thing she put in your hand for a long time.

Now she passes you a paper cup of squash and says you still hold your chin like you are waiting for a starting gun. You tell her about the job, the night shifts, the marriage you have decided to treat as an anecdote. She listens with her head tilted, the way she used to listen to splits. Then she says she had the words done in Toronto, both of them, so she would stop waiting for a whistle that was never going to blow.

The lights buzz overhead. You finish your squash and ask whether she still runs. She says only when something is chasing her. You say you will be at the stile on Saturday at six, and she laughs so loudly that a man by the trophies turns round to look.