Semicolon tattoo on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black semicolon sits on the inner wrist of a hand held palm up against a dark background. The mark has clean, crisp edges with uniform fill and no shading. The tattoo is centred in the lower half of the frame, with a blurred denim surface and a sheet of plastic visible at the right edge.

Fine line Forearm Hand Semicolon Punctuation Wrist Minimal

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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

You set the type for Mrs Harrow's almanac in the back room of the press at Thornly, where the beech wood comes right up to the last cottage. The case is wrong again. The sorts for the semicolon live in the drawer that sticks, and you have to tug it open with two fingers while the ink dries on the stone.

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Old Ambrose, who taught you the case, says the semicolon is the sort nobody buys and everybody needs. He wipes his thumb on his apron and squints at the proof. "It joins two sentences that would fall apart on their own," he says. "It tells the reader that this is not finished, and neither is that."

The letter arrives on a Thursday, carried up from the post van by the boy who collects the ash for the kiln. It is from your brother in the port, two lines long. The first line ends in a semicolon, and the second begins with the word if. You read it standing at the bench. He does not say what he will do if. You lock the page into the forme anyway and pull a proof, then another.

You pin the last proof above the bench, where the damp can't reach it. The little dark mark sits between the two lines, patient as a held gate, and the second half of the sentence stays open for the next post.