Black lettering tattoo in a typewriter-style serif font reading do I dare disturb the universe? across the forearm, in a lettering style.

Quote lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm showing a two-line quotation tattooed in black ink, set in a typewriter-style serif font. The first line sits above the second, which runs diagonally across the arm towards the elbow. The skin is pale and evenly lit against a dark background, with a grey knitted sleeve at the top edge of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Word Typewriter font

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Halcyon Rose was four days out of Southampton and the Bay of Biscay had started to throw itself at the porthole. Ivy Pascoe sat in the purser's cubby with the Remington bolted to the desk and a single sheet rolled into it. She had typed the letter four times. Each time the bell rang at the end of the line, she had torn the sheet free, folded it and put it back in her bag, where it sat against her ribs like a second, unreasonable heartbeat.

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The letter was to a man named Tom Galloway, who had gone out to Valparaíso two winters ago to manage a copper works and had written only twice since. She wanted to ask whether the offer of a passage home still stood. She wanted to say that she had thought about it every morning at the mangle. Most of all she wanted to know if he would think her foolish for asking. Do I dare disturb the universe, she thought, and then, because she was a practical woman, she thought that the universe had probably been disturbed quite enough by the Kaiser and the influenza, and it could hardly object to one letter.

Amos, the steward, knocked with a tray of tea. He looked at the typewriter and then at her, and set the cup down without comment, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for her since Southampton. "Swell's getting up," he said. "Keys'll jump if you let them."

At Lisbon she posted it herself, in the brass box on the quay, and felt the tiny weight leave her hand. The ship sounded its horn and turned south. Ivy stood at the rail with her hat in her fist until the harbour lights had gone to pinpricks, and then she went below to wait for an answer that would take a month to cross the sea.