Black and grey serif lettering reading past on one inner wrist and future on the other, shown in a black and white photograph.

Past and future lettering on two wrists

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two inner wrists are shown side by side, with the word past in a small serif typeface on the left wrist and the word future in the same style on the right. The lettering is solid black ink with crisp edges, and the photograph is black and white. The wrists fill the centre of the frame against a neutral background.

Lettering Forearm Word Serif Wrist

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cutter's shop smelled of hot wax and river clay, and Nasi was still wiping her hands on her apron when her sister Ilu set the two seal stones on the bench. One was a dull grey chalcedony, scratched with a single word in the old script. The other was pale and new, and she had not yet cut a letter into it.

Keep reading

Their father had made them both, each seal the mirror of the other, and he had given them the rule of the shop: a seal records what has been promised, so the stone that is cut must always sit beside the one that is still blank. Nasi had cut the past. Ilu, who had never liked the rule, wanted to know what the future would look like in the same hand.

They argued until the lamp guttered. In the end Nasi took the fine point and pressed the word for future into the blank stone, letter by letter, and her hand did not shake, because a seal cut twice in one day is a lie the gods can smell. When it was done they rolled both stones across a tablet of wet clay, and the two impressions lay side by side, one faded at the edges, one still sharp.

Ilu wore the old stone on a cord until it was worn smooth as a river pebble. Nasi never cut a second word. She said the stone did not need to know how the story ended. Whenever Ilu passed the bench she touched the blank stone beside the bench lamp, the way you touch a door you mean to open.