Black script lettering reading strength lies in nights of peaceful slumber over an orange and pink watercolour splash on a forearm.

Script quote with watercolour splash on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm tattoo of a handwritten-style phrase in black script, reading strength lies in nights of peaceful slumber, with the word peaceful slumber set larger than the rest. Behind the lettering sits a soft watercolour-style splash in orange, pink and yellow tones. The photo is taken at an angle against a wooden surface, with the lettering running diagonally across the arm.

Lettering Forearm Script Quote Watercolour splash Splash Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, I have stopped counting the nights I've lain awake listening to the number 73 bus grind up Holloway Road, so you needn't remind me of it. Your mother says you're sleeping badly too. Good. Then we are both fools in the same way, and that is some comfort.

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The man at the studio in Hackney, the one with the green kettle and the sketchbook full of birds, told me a quote is only worth carrying if you can read it upside down in a mirror. I thought him soft until he drew the lettering freehand, slanting across the back of my arm like a dropped ribbon. He wanted the words to look as if someone had written them quickly, in a hurry, and then meant them. We settled on the phrase from your grandmother's card, the one about strength and sleep. He said the big words should sit heavier, so peaceful slumber rides larger than the rest. I asked why he'd want the sleep to shout. He said that's what we never manage.

The splash behind it was his idea, a bruise of orange and pink that bleeds out where the ink stops, like a sunset someone has spilled on the page. It stings less than you'd think. I sat through it with my eyes on the ceiling tiles and thought of you, asleep at last on the sofa in Crouch End with the telly still murmuring.

Try it, love. Write the words somewhere you'll see them at three in the morning. I'll be looking at mine.

All my love, Nadia