Close photo of a fine line script tattoo reading I was not built to break, placed across the upper chest above a blue and white striped top.

Script quote tattoo across the upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the words I was not built to break written in a single line of thin, cursive script across the skin. The linework is fine and even, with no shading, and the ink is dark grey-black against the lighter skin tone. The text runs diagonally from lower left to upper right, and the top edge of a blue and white striped garment fills the lower part of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Chest Quote Word Script Text

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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 pit closed on a Friday, and by the Monday my father was already building a bench in the back yard out of pallet wood, because a man who has spent thirty-one years underground does not know what to do with his hands in daylight. Mam kept the kettle on and said nothing about the envelope from the colliery office, which sat under the clock on the mantelpiece for a month like a guest nobody wanted to name.

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I was sixteen and angry in the way only a boy can be when his whole street is grieving at once. I took the bus to Barnsley on a Saturday with forty pounds from my paper round and walked into a shop above a chemist's that smelt of antiseptic and cheap coffee. The man behind the counter had forearms like tree roots and asked what I wanted. I said I wanted something that meant the opposite of what they were saying about us on the telly. He looked at me a long time, then pulled a sheet of tracing paper from a drawer and wrote out a line in a looping hand, asking if it would do.

I told Dad about it the night before I went under the needle, expecting him to shout. Instead he went quiet, then reached across the table and tapped the back of my hand twice, the way the deputy used to tap the roof timbers to hear whether they sang true. "Well," he said. "Don't let them tell you different."

When the ink was healing and the skin across my collarbone had gone tight and pink, Dad came to see it while I was buttoning my shirt. He read the words slowly, moving his lips, and then he laughed, a short surprised sound I had not heard since August. "Built to break," he said. "Aye. Built to bend, more like." He picked up his cap and went out to finish the bench.