Woman in a white tee with a yellow sun graphic, showing black lettering tattoos including KEEP and GRL PWR on her forearm.

Lettering tattoos on forearm beside a sun print tee

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photo is cropped to the torso and arms, with a white t-shirt carrying a yellow and black mandala sun graphic as the dominant subject. Several black-ink tattoos sit on the forearms and upper arm, the most legible being the words KEEP and GRL PWR in plain sans-serif lettering, with a short script word below. Greys and black dominate the ink, and the image is lit against a dark patterned wall with the tattoos clearly visible.

Lettering Forearm Upper arm Lettering Script Infinity symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

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The rain came down on the Saturday market at Hallam Row as if it had a grudge against the canvas, and I sold nothing until gone eleven. Then a young woman in a white tee with a great gold sun printed on it stopped at my trestle, turned over a tin of enamel badges, and asked whether I had anything that said keep. I told her I had a box of old tram tickets stamped KEEP OUT, which she did not want, and she laughed at me properly, the way you laugh at someone who has tried too hard.

She bought a hand-stitched purse from the corner for two pounds fifty, paid in coppers, and tilted her arm so the rain would not smudge the words on it. GRL PWR was there in plain black capitals, with a short scribbled word beneath that I could not read through the drizzle, and a loop lying on its side like a sleeping eight. She said her gran used to tell her you keep the good things by going on past the bad ones, and that the loop was for that: going round and round until you come out where you started, only older.

I thought of you, of course, and of how hard we fought to keep the stall after Dad went. I did not say so. Instead I gave her a free badge with a crescent moon on it, the one we never could sell, and she pinned it to her shirt over the sun, which made both of them look a little brighter in the grey.

I am keeping the tram tickets, and I have decided the moon badges are staying with us too. Come on Saturday and help me sell the rest.

Love, Nell