Black and grey close-up of the phrase still I rise in a typewriter-style serif, tattooed in a gentle curve on the inner wrist, against a dark background.

Still I rise lettering on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads still I rise. in a slightly curved line of typewriter-style serif lettering across the inner wrist. The ink is solid black with clean, even edges, and the photograph is in monochrome with soft focus and a dark background that draws attention to the text.

Lettering Forearm Text Phrase Typewriter font Wrist

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

Sit yourself down, love. The kettle's only just boiled and the tea won't be fit to drink for another five minutes, so you'll have to hear me out first. You know the old typewriter in the records cupboard on seven? Nobody's touched it since the computers came. Ivy Pascoe kept it going for thirty-one years, typing discharge letters with two fingers and a grudge. The keys stick on the second line, and the letter e never quite comes out black enough.

Keep reading

One night in February the lights dropped to their emergency setting, and the lift stopped between floors with a porter in it called Dennis. Ivy was alone at the desk. She wound a sheet of carbon into the machine, and because there was nothing else to do, she typed the same three words over and over, the way you'd count sheep. Still I rise. Still I rise. The strike bar kept catching the paper and she'd tap it loose, and somewhere down the lift shaft Dennis started singing it back to her through the grille, badly, in the wrong key.

Morning came and the engineers got the lift moving. Nobody asked about the sheet. But when the day staff found it, the words had been pressed so hard that the ink bit through the paper in a gentle curve, the way a line bends when the hand holding it is steady but tired. They pinned it above the kettle, and it's still there if you look.

So when you're on your knees on a Tuesday with a mop and somebody's bad news on the floor, think of Ivy at her typewriter and Dennis singing flat in the dark. Still I rise, love. Now drink your tea.