Black script lettering on a forearm reads I am not afraid, I was born to do this, with a skull bracelet on the wrist and ripped denim behind it.

Script quote on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with two lines of black cursive script tattooed across the skin, reading I am not afraid and I was born to do this. The lettering is solid black with even, flowing strokes and sits across the centre of the arm. A silver skull bracelet sits near the wrist, and the background shows light blue ripped jeans and a dark floor.

Lettering Forearm Quote Script Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags had the words inked on the inside of her arm the week the big top came down for its last winter in Kent, and she never once explained them to the man from the council. He wanted to know why a travelling show needed a fire certificate for a tent that had been patched more times than a sailor's trousers. Mags just held out her arm and let him read it, the blue ink soft from the damp.

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We struck the tent in sleet. Dad's rigging was older than either of us, rope gone pale and greasy at the joins, and Mags worked the knots with her teeth when her fingers wouldn't close. Nobody paid us to be brave that week. The ticket money covered diesel for the lorry and not much else, so we fed the two ponies on turnips begged from the market and slept in our coats.

The last show was a Tuesday. Forty people came, most of them the same faces who had come every year since I was small, and they stamped their feet on the boards to keep warm. Mags climbed the rope at the top of the tent, sat on the little platform, and waited until the drum stopped. Then she let go.

She caught the bar on the second swing. The whole tent creaked, and somebody at the back laughed in a way that wasn't quite a sob. I still say it was the best thing I ever saw, and I have seen nothing since that comes close.