Black and grey lettering tattoo of a Bible verse above a rosary with a cross, on a forearm, shown in a two-panel photo.

Scripture and rosary on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows four lines of script reading "I can do everything through HIM who gives me strength Philippians 4:13" above a rosary whose beads curve across the arm and end in a large cross with a small shield-shaped centrepiece. The linework is clean and the shading is soft grey, with the text in bold black lettering. The image is a two-panel collage of the same tattoo on a forearm, with the design filling most of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Scripture Bible verse Rosary Cross Text Bead

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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 lamp went out at twenty past eleven, and you knew it before you saw it, because the room changed its weight. The wind had been shouldering the tower since dusk, and now the glass above you was black and the lens lay dead as a stone. Below, the Atlantic kept throwing itself at the rock as it had done for two hundred years, indifferent to whether anyone climbed up to tend the light.

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Your mother's rosary was in your coat pocket, where it always was on a shift. Years of Hail Marys had worn the wooden beads glossy, and the small silver cross had gone soft at the edges. You pulled it out and counted by touch, the way she had taught you in the kitchen at home, because your hands were shaking too much to find the matches. Philippians was the verse she had stitched on a sampler above the sink. As a boy you had hated it, all that talk of strength, when you only wanted someone to tell you what to do.

You went up the ladder with the spirit can and the matches. The mantle caught on the third try, a pale blue blossom that swelled into flame, and you stood with your forehead against the cold brass while the beam swung out across the water. Somewhere a trawler's engine answered with a faint wrong note, then steadied.

At dawn the sea had gone the colour of slate and the lamp was still burning, though the mantle would need replacing by the week's end. You sat on the step with the rosary in your lap, counting the last decade. The verse had not made the wind any gentler. It had only given your hands something to do until the work was done.