Fine black lettering reading BE PRESENT, BE PATIENT and BE THE LIGHT across the inner forearm, beside a gold chain bracelet.

Three short phrases on an inner forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three lines of small black capital letters in a clean sans-serif typeface run across the inner forearm, reading BE PRESENT, BE PATIENT and BE THE LIGHT. The letters are crisp, evenly spaced and rendered in solid black ink with no shading. A gold chain bracelet and a gold cuff sit at the wrist on the left, and the plain background keeps the focus on the text.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The glass had to be done backwards, Joe, so the street could read it the right way round. Vera pressed a folded rag into his palm and nodded at the chemist's door on Cobb Street, where the gilt had flaked off in the rain since August. 'Mind your breath on the pane. Breathe out, not in, or the size wanders.'

Keep reading

He painted BE PRESENT first, because she said a man never starts with the hard bit. His capitals leaned like drunk fence posts. She wiped them off with her thumb and made him do it again, and again, until the letters stood upright and sat evenly apart, every gap the width of a finger. 'Sans serif,' she said. 'No little feet on the letters. Nothing that wants attention for itself.'

By the third line his shoulders had loosened. BE PATIENT went on in one long stroke and he was pleased with it until she pointed out the T had crowded the A. BE THE LIGHT he did last, standing on the step with the tin of black enamel under his arm, while the shop lamp came on behind him and the words began to glow in reverse.

Vera stood across the road with her arms folded and watched the street. A woman with a pushchair stopped, read the first line, then the second, and looked up at the third as if someone had asked her a question. 'There,' Vera said. 'They read it right way round, the lot of them. That's the job. You don't get to be the one who sees it.'

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