Black lettering tattoo on a forearm, with the words FLOAT, CATCH, BLEED, DEATH, STIFF and PUSH stacked in a staggered column in a simple sans serif.

Six stacked words on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a column of six capitalised words, FLOAT, CATCH, BLEED, DEATH, STIFF and PUSH, each on its own line and offset slightly from the one above. The letters use a clean, uniform sans serif with even, medium-weight black linework and no shading. The photo is a close, straight-on shot of a bare forearm against a light fabric background, with indoor lighting.

Lettering Forearm Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The list was taped to the inside of the cupboard door above the guillotine, between a paper merchant's price sheet and a calendar still turned to March, and Harold had written it in carpenter's pencil so nobody could claim they hadn't read it. Float. Catch. Bleed. Death. Stiff. Push. I took it for a superstition until my first run on the Heidelberg, when the sheets came off the bed stuck to each other and Harold stood behind me with his arms folded and said, that's the death of a job, lass, you've let the ink sit too thick.

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He taught it to me in order, the way you'd teach a knot. You float the ink on the slab until it lies flat as skin on milk, then you catch the first sheet square against the grippers before it can drift. If the image runs off the edge you've let it bleed, and you say so out loud so the next person knows to pull the furniture back. Stiff is the card that won't feed, and push is the hand flat on the bed when the whole machine wants to jam. Harold never explained the death. He just tapped the word with his thumbnail whenever I pulled a bad proof.

The works closed the spring after his heart gave out. The landlord wanted the floor for flats, and the Heidelberg went to a dealer in Halifax. I went to clear the cupboard and found the list still there, the pencil gone silver with handling. I tore it off the door and folded it into my purse, and on the bus home I read it twice, then once more with my eyes shut, stiff and steady and pushing forward, catching the last stop before it slid past.