Grey serif lettering spelling the word arm, written vertically down the outer upper arm in a Lettering style.

The word arm in serif letters on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of the outer upper arm of a person in a dark grey top and shorts, showing the word arm written vertically in lowercase serif letters. The lettering is shaded in soft grey with a fine outline and gentle variation in tone, and the background is a plain grey fabric with a blue-grey tone. The composition is close and centred on the tattoo, with the arm filling most of the frame.

Lettering Upper arm Word Letter Serif

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

No, sit closer, the fire's gone low and I'll not shout it over the pumps. You want to know what the word means. Well, it means what it looks like it means, which is the trouble with old words. Stacked down the side like steps, a, r, m, the way the letters were set on the gate at Coldharbour Lane before the lane was drowned.

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My grandmother had the gate. Her father's father had nailed it up there, and the letters were grey as wet slate, with little feet on them, serifs they called them, as if each letter needed a foot to stand on. She'd tell us that a word needs something to stand on or it falls over, and that was why the gate lasted. Everything else went to rust.

The word was for the bit of a person that reaches. You hang your arm out of a window, you give it to a friend, you bend it to lift a child. Nobody in my day knew it was a thing a body could lose or keep. But she said a man named Tobiah Gale came to the lane with a sack of seed and said the arm was only a lever for the hand, and the hand was only a tool for holding on. He held on to nothing, she said, and it all went under the tide with him.

So when the water came up over the gatepost, the children of the lane climbed onto the roof with the letters, and they took them down one by one and carried them up the hill in their arms. That is what the word is for, child. Not the bone. The carrying. Now go and put another log on, and mind the sparks.