Close-up of a bare arm with black lettering reading LUCE in capitals on the upper arm and a small script line on the forearm near the elbow.

Luce and script lettering on an arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a bare arm in a sleeveless teal top against a blurred pale background. The word LUCE is set in bold, sans-serif capitals on the side of the upper arm, while a much smaller line of cursive script sits on the forearm close to the elbow. Both pieces are rendered in dark grey or black ink with clean, even linework and no colour.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Forearm Lettering Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the seventh floor of Harrow Point ever changed a bulb in the stairwell until Mrs Okafor's son did it for her, and that was the summer my mum decided the building needed a name for its light. She was the caretaker's daughter, which meant she had keys to everything and no patience for anyone who complained about the dark.

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"Luce," she said, when I asked what it meant. "Light. Italian. My nonna's word for the morning." She said it as though it belonged to her, which it did, because she had copied it from a postcard in a drawer and never given the card back.

We lived between the bins and a lift that only worked on Tuesdays. Every evening she walked the stairs with a torch in her teeth, counting the landings under her breath, and every evening the light from the window at the top fell across the concrete in a long grey stripe that didn't care who was standing in it.

The winter the council finally fitted the new sensor lights, she stood at the bottom of the stairwell and waited for them to come on one floor at a time. When the seventh floor flickered, she laughed out loud, and the sound went all the way up to the roof. I still think of that when I need to be brave. She was never waiting for the light to arrive, only for someone to find the switch.