Black and grey lettering tattoo of a two-line literary quote in a serif typeface across a forearm.

Literary quote on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a two-line passage of black serif text tattooed across the inner forearm, set in a clean, even typeface with fine, consistent strokes. The skin is pale and the ink is solid black with no shading, against a black and white background showing a lace garment and a patterned skull print. The image is monochrome and the lettering sits centrally and sharply in frame.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Word Lettering Teeth Tongue

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the 22:14 for Carlisle was called, Hilary had already run the word through her mouth four times under her breath, the way her father had taught her on the bench at Thornwick when she was seven. Tongue up to the roof, three small steps down, then a tap on the teeth at the third. He had made her say it back until the vowels sat round and the timetable stopped sounding like a threat. The tannoy on platform two had died at six, so the delays were chalked by hand on a board propped against the ticket hatch, and Mr Barrow kept rubbing out his own spelling.

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An old woman in a green coat stood at the hatch with a carpet bag and waited for an answer she could hear. She tried twice to ask whether the train was running late, and both times the first word stuck in her throat like a dry biscuit. Hilary watched her hands tighten on the bag handle. She leaned over the counter and said, quietly, that there was no need to hurry the sound, that it could take its time coming out. Then she showed her the three steps with two fingers against her own lip, down, down, down, and the tap.

The woman tried it. Her first attempt came out in pieces, and her second came out whole, and when she finally managed her own surname at the hatch her face went the colour of the chalk on the board. Hilary did not say well done. She just nodded at the lamp coming round the bend from the viaduct, where the rain had let up over the line.

When the train pulled in, the woman stepped aboard and said thank you through the open door, clean and unhurried. Hilary rubbed out Mr Barrow's spelling and chalked the platform number underneath, and she did not say the word aloud again that night.