Close view of the back of a woman's neck showing a small black lettering tattoo of the word freed in a typewriter style, placed at the nape below a hair bun.

Small word tattoo on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a woman's neck and upper shoulders, with her hair tied up in a bun under a patterned headscarf. A single word, freed followed by a full stop, sits at the nape in a small, evenly spaced typewriter-style typeface. The ink is solid black with clean edges, and the background is a warm, out-of-focus wooden fence, with a white crocheted top framing the lower edge.

Lettering Neck Word Typewriter font Text

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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

The machine came up from Mr Okafor's yard on Tuesday on the back of a coal lorry, all black enamel and grime, and I have spent three evenings coaxing the e to stop sticking. You will laugh, but I wanted it working before I wrote to you properly.

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The garden at Holt Cottage is mostly nettles and a pear tree that hasn't fruited since the war. Yesterday I carried the typewriter out under it, set it on the upturned crate and fed in a sheet of Dad's old onion paper. The ribbon smelled of ink and summers I thought I'd forgotten. Every letter Mother ever wrote to the solicitor was typed on a machine just like it, so I suppose I was only borrowing a habit that wasn't mine.

I typed out the thing I'd been practising in my head for a year, and then, because the last key had jammed in the shop, I pressed the full stop as hard as I could. It struck clean. The bar lifted, left its tiny black mark on the page, and a wren went up out of the pear tree as if someone had called its name.

I haven't posted the page. It's folded in the biscuit tin with the spare ribbon, where you'd never think to look. Come on Sunday and bring the shears. The hedge needs cutting, and I want you to see the clean line I've made of it.