Black script lettering reading Live on a forearm, with a blue semicolon in place of the i dot and a small red heart after the e.

Live script with semicolon on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo spells the word Live in bold black script across the forearm, with the i replaced by a blue semicolon. A small red heart sits after the final letter, beside the lettering. The black lines are smooth and even, set against a warm skin tone and a blurred background.

Lettering Forearm Semicolon Heart Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okafor came into the shop on a Tuesday with a paper napkin folded into quarters, and she unfolded it on my bench as if it were a treaty. On it was the word LIVE in a loose, leaning hand, and in the place where the i should sit there was a blue dot with a tail beneath it. A semicolon, she said. I told her a semicolon was a comma that had gone to university and come back with opinions, and she laughed so hard that the kettle clicked off behind me.

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The job was for the window of the old lifeboat hall, where the coffee morning had outgrown its tea urn and needed a proper sign. I mixed the blue from a tin of Prussian blue my father had left on the top shelf, and it came up the colour of a February sea. The semicolon took me three goes. The first dot was too fat and looked like a bruise, the second had a tail that curled the wrong way, and by the third my hand had remembered what my father taught me about letting the brush do the work. The black script went on in long, unbroken strokes, and the L swooped up like a gull taking off.

At the end of the napkin she had drawn a small red heart, and she asked if I could put one after the final e. I did it with a liner brush and a steady breath, and it came out no bigger than a drop of ink. She stood on the pavement the next morning, read the word aloud to herself, and tapped the blue dot with one finger through the glass. That bit, she said, is where you stop for a second and then carry on. A gull landed on the gutter above the e and considered it. I went back inside to rinse the brushes, and I left the window to dry in the sun.