Black script lettering reading Keep Moving Forward with a long arrow running along the forearm in a fine line tattoo.

Keep Moving Forward arrow on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads Keep Moving Forward in black script lettering, with a long arrow running beneath the words from left to right and a feathered tip at the right end. The linework is clean and even, with solid black lines and no shading. The photograph is taken close up on the underside of a pale forearm against a dark, plastic-covered surface.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Arrow Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top came down in Shrewsbury on a Tuesday, and you were the one folding the last of the red canvas while the rain made it heavy as wet sails. Painted across the flap above the ticket hatch were the words your mother had chalked out herself, KEEP MOVING FORWARD, with a black arrow beneath them that someone had repainted so often it stood proud of the cloth.

Keep reading

Your uncle Tomas had worked the archery act for thirty-one years, shooting apples off the heads of volunteers from the far end of the ring. His eyes had gone in the spring. Nobody said it over supper. They said the wind was bad, the light was flat, the bow had warped in the damp. You took the bow down from its hooks and found the string already waxed the way he always waxed it, as if his hands had been on it that morning.

On the final night you stood where he used to stand, twenty paces from the board, with the lamps dimmed to a single follow-spot. The generator drowned out the crowd. You could still hear Tomas somewhere behind the curtain, counting under his breath the way he did when a shot mattered. You drew, let the string settle against your cheek, and loosed. The arrow flew wide, into the canvas, and stuck there, quivering just beneath the painted one, pointing the same way.

Afterwards the lorries idled in the field with their headlamps on. You worked the shaft free, turned it in your hand, and aimed it down the empty road towards the motorway, where the lights were already moving.