Close photo of an orange and black cartoon lion cub, Simba, with the script words Remember who you are beneath it, tattooed on the upper back.

Simba cub and script quote on the back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

A cartoon lion cub curled in a relaxed pose, outlined in bold black with orange fill and a lighter highlight on the face and body. Below it, black cursive script reads Remember who you are. The tattoo is centred on plain skin with soft, even lighting.

Lettering Back Lion Script Quote

Find an artist for this

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

Ward Six goes quietest between three and four in the morning, when the monitors have stopped arguing and the vending machine hums to itself in the corridor. I was counting saline bags when Kofi, six years old and wearing only one sock, padded out of bay two clutching a battered plastic lion from the play corner. He wanted to know whether lions ever forgot where they came from. I said I wasn't sure, which is what you say to a child at three in the morning when you don't yet know what the answer should be.

Keep reading

So I sat on the edge of the trolley and told him what my nan used to tell me about a cub who ran from the high rock because he thought being king was somebody else's job. He tried being a different sort of lion, the sort who lies in the sun all day and stops listening for the drums across the grass. Then a wise old baboon hung upside down from a tree and reminded him of his own name. Kofi frowned. 'Baboons are rude,' he said. 'Mostly,' I agreed, 'but they're honest.'

He fell asleep against my arm before the story reached its end, the plastic lion tucked under his chin. When his mum came back from the vending machine she found me still sitting there and asked why I hadn't moved. I said the boy had been practising something important, and I didn't want to wake him before he finished.

At six the day shift came in with their coffee and clipboards. Above Kofi's bed, on the whiteboard where we write the nurse's name, someone had drawn a curled cub in orange felt tip, its tail flicked up like a question mark, and underneath it, in careful letters, the words he had asked me to spell out for him. Nobody rubbed them off.