Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo reading sisu on the upper chest near the collarbone.

Script word 'sisu' near the collarbone

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up photograph of a single word, sisu, written in thin black cursive script on skin at the upper chest, close to the collarbone. The linework is even and clean with no shading, and the lettering runs diagonally up towards the shoulder. The image is in natural colour with a soft focus background, and the tattoo sits in the centre of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Chest Script Word Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Aino, The ice on the lower lake took the bay mare on Tuesday, not us, though it came close enough that Father crossed himself twice and then swore at the saint for being slow about it. We have the boats hauled up under the tarpaulin now, and the nets are stiff as bark. Mikko from the sawmill says the spring will come early, but Mikko has said that every year since the war.

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You asked in your last letter whether I still have the word for what we do here. We do not have a word so much as a way of standing. Mother had it the winter the sledge runners snapped and she walked the last nine kilometres to Kuopio with a sack of rye on her back and her boots full of snow. The Swedes in their newspapers call it grit, which is a poor word for a pebble. It is the stubbornness that keeps going after the reasons for going have run out.

The new schoolteacher's boy came down to the boathouse yesterday with his slate. I had written the word on the wall in pencil, the loops joined up the way your hand used to slope when you wrote me from the convent school. He copied it carefully, tongue between his teeth, and asked what it meant. I told him it meant the thing you do after the thing you cannot do. He looked at the grey water for a long while, then nodded as if he had already learned it somewhere. Come home in April. The pike will be waiting, and so will I.