Fine line script tattoo reading Dum spiro spero in dark blue-violet ink on the upper chest near the collarbone.

Latin script tattoo near the collarbone

Lettering · Chest · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a single line of cursive script reading Dum spiro spero on the upper chest, close to the collarbone. The thin, even linework is in a dark blue-violet ink, with no shading or fill. The text sits centrally in the frame against warm, softly lit skin, with a little hair and a blurred edge of fabric visible at the edges.

Lettering Fine line Chest Script Latin phrase Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate arch still stands, though the portcullis went for scrap before either of us was born, and the words our grandfather cut above the keystone have softened so much that only someone who has read them a thousand times could say what they are. I read them every morning now. Dum spiro spero. While I breathe, I hope. I used to think it was a boast, the sort of thing a man carves when he has nothing left to lose, but lately I think it was an instruction, something to do before the next job.

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The chapel roof let in more rain this winter than the winter before, and the rooks have taken the eastern tower for their own. I have counted the tithe barrels in the undercroft twice, and the numbers came out the same both times, which I am choosing to call a mercy. Mrs Hollis brings bread up on Thursdays and tells me the coast road is closed past the mill, so the carts come round by the sands now, and the sands are wrong at the turn of the tide.

Your letter came on the Tuesday boat, folded small and smelling of tar. You write that the ship is repaired, the men are fed, and you will be home before the barley is cut. I have put it under the flat stone by the well where you used to hide your fishing line, because I did not want to read it twice in one day and spoil the first reading.

So come up by the bell path, not the sands, and mind the third step, which I have still not mended. Bring the good needle, the one with the brass eye. There is a line on the chapel wall beside the altar that has faded to nothing, and I think you will want to be the one who fixes it.