Black lion tattoo on the forearm, its body formed from the words Hakuna Matata in a bold tribal-style lettering design.

Lion formed from Hakuna Matata lettering

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black lion in profile walks across the forearm, with its mane, body and tail built from the bold letterforms of the words Hakuna Matata. The lines are thick and even with no shading, so the design reads as flat black ink against the skin. The tattoo sits near the centre of the arm, with a blurred background of seats and clothing behind it.

Lettering Forearm Lion Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you, and mind the lamp, it smokes when the wind comes off the river. My grandmother used to say a lion can be carried in any language if you know where to put the weight. That was the year the bridge at Kestel Ford was shut for repairs, and every lorry and cart and hopeful family from three valleys was jammed on the east bank, waiting for a customs man named Oswin Pell to finish his tea.

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There was a girl among them called Ilse Varn, who had sold her mother's loom to pay for the crossing and had nothing left but a folded paper with the words HAKUNA MATATA written in her brother's hand. He had written them on the back of a ferry ticket years before, when he was a boy who believed every hard road ended in a good one. She had asked the carters what it meant. A baker from Lusk told her it meant no worries, and a schoolmaster from the coast said it was a nonsense phrase from a picture show. Neither of them knew the lion Ilse drew with a burnt stick on the wall of the customs hut while she waited.

She drew him walking, head high, the mane built from the thick loops of those letters, the tail curling out past the final A. The guards laughed at first. Then Oswin Pell came out to see what the noise was, and stood a long time looking at the beast whose body was made of words. He had a daughter who had been lost on the other side of the water, and he had written her name on a ticket of his own.

He stamped every paper in the line that night without reading one of them, and in the morning the bridge was open. Ilse crossed last, and the lion stayed behind on the whitewash, black as a hearthstone, walking nowhere and walking everywhere at once.