Black fine line tattoos on a bare arm, including the lettering We can be heroes, a small sweet, a sunburst and an X, with a solid black rectangle above the sweet.

Small lettering and icon tattoos on an arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bare arm in a grey top and black leather skirt shows several small black tattoos spread from the upper arm to the forearm. The main elements are the capitalised lettering WE CAN BE HEROES, a line of cursive script, a drawn sweet, a sunburst, a small X and a solid black rectangle. The linework is thin and the ink is black and grey, set against a plain pale background.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Forearm Lettering Text Script Sunburst Rectangle

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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

Come closer, the rain doesn't care who's under the awning, and neither do the gulls. You want the story of Tobias Quill, who sold barley drops from a tray outside Ludgate Market every Thursday for forty years, and who wrote on his own forearm the rules he meant to keep.

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He had three rules, and he had them inked in the back room of a shop above the fish stall, the needle buzzing like a wasp in a jar. Sunrise first, for the morning he'd beat the bakers to the kerb. A black box, to cover the day his father's debts came knocking. And an X, for the crossroads where he always turned left. Then the sweet, a wrapped toffee, because a boy who sells sweets had better remember the sugar.

Mind the other line, the one that ran in curling letters: third before making mistakes. Tobias swore it meant you get three chances before you ruin anything, and the old women on the stall believed him, which is how rumours start.

The winter the canal froze, a stranger in a grey coat bought the whole tray and asked him to speak of heroes. Tobias laughed and said it was only sugar. But the stranger tapped the words on his arm, we can be heroes, and walked off into the rain. Tobias never learned whether he'd been paid or cursed. The sweets sold out by noon. And the black box on his arm, they say, was never filled in.