Two pairs of fists show black circle tattoos on the top knuckles and the words TAKE TIME in black lettering across the lower knuckles, a lettering tattoo on the hands.

Take time knuckle lettering

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two pairs of clenched fists are shown, with a black circle tattoo on each finger of the upper hands and the words TAKE TIME spelt in thin black capitals across the knuckles of the lower hands. The linework is clean and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading or colour. The close, centred framing places the knuckles at the front of the image against a plain light background with dark sleeves.

Lettering Hand Circle Dot Fist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pips are your problem, not the bone. Your master says this while he holds the ivory up to the lamp so you can see the hairline crack running from the three toward the edge. You have been at the bench since the water clock on the agora wall showed the fourth hour, and your palms are already slick against the drill's wooden shaft. He flicks the die across the table. It lands on its side, rolls twice, and you watch your careless work turn into a lie.

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He dips a reed in the soot pot and draws a ring on each finger of your right hand, then each finger of your left, eight small circles in all. Each one is a pip you must cut, and each one must take a single turn of the drill, no more and no less. Your knuckles smart where the ink settles into the creases. The first circle eats the afternoon. By the time the lamps are lit you have cut two faces true, and the old man grunts, which in this workshop is praise.

A dice-player from Corinth comes in after dark, sure of his luck, and he slaps his own bone onto the table with a laugh. Your master says nothing. He only pushes your finished die across the wood, the one with the slow, even pips, and lets the stranger roll. It rocks, settles, and shows its face. The Corinthian stares at it for a long time.

Afterwards, your master takes your hand and rubs at the soot circles with his thumb. They don't come off. He says you will carry them for the rest of your days, and you think he means the work, until he taps your knuckle and says, quite gently, that the other thing is easier to forget.