Black fine serif lettering reading still I rise across the inner wrist, shown in a dark, softly lit black and grey photograph.

still I rise lettering on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a wrist with the words still I rise tattooed in black serif lettering that runs diagonally across the skin. The letters are crisp and solid with no shading, set against pale skin and a dark, vignetted background. The image is black and grey, with the focus on the text and the soft edges of the surrounding arm.

Lettering Forearm Quote Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down on the wall, the lot of you, and mind the kerb, it's been wet since Tuesday. Now. Did I ever tell you about Ada Pellow, who set type at the Gilt Lamp press behind Farringdon Road, back when the whole street smelled of hot lead and cheap gin?

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Every night after the bells, Ada locked herself in with the cases of letters and set one line by hand. Backwards, every letter, the way the old presses demand. Nobody asked her what the line was. The foreman thought it was a love note. The landlord thought it was a curse. It was only four words she kept knocking into the stick: still, I, rise, and then the full stop, which she always set last, hard, like a nail.

Then came the spring the Fleet ran over its banks and the cellar filled to the lintel. Ada went down in her boots with a lantern and found the forme floating in the dark, the type loose and scattered across the black water. Half the city would have called it ruined. She fished out every sort she could find, wet and cold, and laid them on the bench to dry.

The ink had seeped into the grain, and when she pulled the first proof that morning, the words came up clean, the right way round, sharp as a sunrise over the chimneys. Ada tacked the sheet to the wall above the lamp, and that is where it hangs still, if you know which door to knock on. Mind yourselves now, the bus is coming.