Black ink tattoo of the words so it goes in a typewriter-style font with a long arrow beneath, on the upper back, in a black and white photo.

"so it goes" lettering with arrow

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads so it goes in a bold, typewriter-style serif font, with a long arrow running underneath the lettering and its head pointing left. The linework is solid black with clean edges, and the image has no colour ink. The skin fills most of the frame against a dark background at the top left, with the tattoo sitting near the centre.

Lettering Back Text Arrow

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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 are locking the shop on Carver Street when the rain starts, and the last customer of the day is standing under your awning with a grey Imperial portable tucked under one arm like a sleeping cat. She says it was her father's. She says it types every letter a half-second early, and she would like it to stop.

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Upstairs, under the striplight, you lift the carriage and find an escapement sitting proud of its pin. Someone has been at it with a hairpin. You set the type bars back by hand, feeling for the small hook on each one, and while you work the machine starts to hum the way old machines do when they remember being used. Outside, a 43 bus sighs past and the pavement shines orange under the lamps.

When you test it, the keys produce a line that starts at the right margin and runs backwards, each word an arrow of ink pointing toward the beginning. She laughs when she sees it. You don't. You know what it is to want the past to come back the way you left it, so you tell her the honest thing: it will go where it goes, and all you can do is fit the bars.

She pays in coins, folds the sheet into her coat, and leaves you with the machine humming on the bench. Before you lock up you fit a fresh ribbon and type the only sentence you can think of, then pull the paper out and read it under the light. It says so it goes, and for once the letters march the right way.