Two matching black lettering tattoos on the inner forearms, one reading 'you are the smell before rain' and the other 'you are the blood in my veins', in a typewriter-style font.

Matching quote tattoos on two forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of two forearms with small black lettering tattoos, each carrying one line of a quote in a typewriter-style serif font. The left arm reads 'you are the smell before rain' and the right arm reads 'you are the blood in my veins', set in two lines on each arm. The ink is solid black on pale skin against a dark background, and the photo is framed on the arms with a white top visible at the centre.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Rain Blood Typewriter font Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Adler typewriter in the back of Morrow's print shop had a sticky lowercase e, so Ruth had to strike it twice, hard, and everything she typed came out pressed deep into the paper. She was copying a line for her brother Frank, who had asked for it on the back of a ration card because he could not think how to say it aloud. He was leaving on the Thursday train for Catterick, and the old men on Dock Road swore the rain would come by teatime.

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Ruth typed the first half slowly: you are the smell before rain. She had never found a better word for it than the one she already had, the wet dust lifting off the cobbles, the tramlines going green. Frank had said it was like her, always arriving a minute ahead of the weather. Then, because he had also said something about her being the rest of him, she typed the second line on a separate strip: you are the blood in my veins. The e stuck, and the strike bit through the card.

Morrow, who had been pretending not to listen, came over with a pot of ink and a steel nib and offered to letter it properly. Ruth shook her head. She wanted the ugly letters, the ones that showed the machine had been there.

Frank came in at six with rain on his collar and read the card at the counter without taking off his cap. He folded it twice and put it in the pocket over his heart, where it made a small hard square he could feel all the way to Catterick. Ruth pressed her thumb to the stuck e as if she could flatten it back into place, and the first drops hit the window.