Black fine line tattoo on a lower abdomen reading Life Goes On in script, with a heartbeat trace and a semicolon above the words.

Life Goes On script with heartbeat line

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black script reading Life Goes On sits across the lower abdomen, with a heartbeat trace on either side of a semicolon above the lettering. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black on the skin. The tattoo is centred in the frame against a white waistband and a metal belly chain at the upper right.

Fine line Lettering Other Script Heartbeat Semicolon Text

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Priya,

Keep reading

The monitor in bay four still stutters when the kettle goes on the trolley, so don't trust a flat line until you've seen the trace with your own eyes. I've left the blue handover book on the desk. Everything in it is true, including the bit about Mr Okafor, who asked for the window open at three and then slept through the whole of the round.

Dr Sumner used to say a semicolon is a full stop that has decided to keep going. He drew one on the back of a discharge form and pinned it above the sluice sink, with a little heartbeat either side of it, and everyone called it his sermon. I thought it was twee until the night in March when bed nine went flat for eleven seconds and then picked back up, like a man clearing his throat in a queue.

That night the registrar wanted it written as a finished event, all neat and full stops. I wouldn't let her. I wrote it as a pause, with the time, the drug, the name of the porter who came running, and I left the line open at the bottom of the page so that anyone reading it after us would know the story hadn't ended there.

The sheet is still above the sink. Don't take it down when they repaint, and don't let the agency girls tell you it's morbid. It's just the truth with its coat on. Ring me on Sunday and tell me how bay four is behaving.

Love, Margaret