Semicolon tattoo on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A bare foot is shown in side profile resting on a red fleece blanket, with a small solid black semicolon tattooed on the outer ankle above the heel. The mark is a simple dot and comma in black ink with crisp edges and no shading. The red background fills most of the frame, and the ankle sits slightly left of centre with the toes visible on the right.

Ankle Semicolon Foot

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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

Dear Tom, it has rained every Saturday since you left, and the tarpaulin over my stall sags like a wet sail, so the type in the wooden trays has gone dull and grey. I sold four lowercase e's and a case of bold italic capitals to a man restoring a church noticeboard in Otley. Nobody wants the punctuation sorts. They sit in their little compartments at the back, the question marks bent at the tails and the bracket someone chewed years ago.

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Yesterday a customer stopped at the tray and asked if I had a semicolon. I said most people only ask for the full stop or the comma, and she laughed and said she wanted the one that doesn't end anything. I found it under a heap of spare rules, its dot a little pitted from some printer's grip a century back. I wiped it on my apron. She paid two pounds fifty, turned it over twice in her palm, and walked off into the drizzle with it closed in her fist.

After she left I went through the rest of the tray and noticed the semicolons were the only sorts still whole. Full stops wear down and commas break at the tail, but the semicolon keeps its two parts apart so carefully that nothing has ever pressed them together. I used to tell you it was the cleverest mark in the box, the one that says the sentence isn't finished, only resting.

So I've kept the last one back for you. It's in the envelope with this letter, wrapped in the local paper from the week you went. Don't sell it. Put it somewhere you'll see it when you're deciding whether to say the next thing. Your loving sister, Ruth.