Black typewriter-style lettering reading I am burdened with glorious purpose runs along the side of a torso, shown in two stacked photographs.

Typewriter quote along the side of the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph is a two-panel image of a single line of black typewriter-style lettering on the side of a torso, with a blue top pulled up at the edge of the frame. The text reads I am burdened with glorious purpose across the two panels, with the top panel showing the first part and the bottom panel the end. The ink is solid black with soft grey shading at the edges, and the skin is shown in close, fairly casual lighting.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

Keep reading

The ferry was cancelled again this morning, so I have been sitting in the harbour office with Mr Cordery's sack of ledgers and a kettle that only boils when it feels like it. You asked in your last letter whether the island had made me softer. It has not. It has made me stubborn, which I suspect is the same thing wearing a coat.

You will remember the typewriter the Morrow sisters left behind when they sold the bakery. Nobody on Skerrow could work it, so it sat under the window gathering salt. Last Thursday I cleared the keys with a toothbrush and typed out the line Father used to say when the boats came in short: I am burdened with glorious purpose. I typed it over and over until the ribbon gave out and the letters came up pale and ghostly, like a wave going back out.

I have decided to have it inked. Not on paper, on me, along the ribs where the oilskin always chafes. Dr Pell says it is vanity dressed as sensibility, and perhaps he is right, but the tattooist in Penzance has promised to copy the Morrow typeface letter for letter, serifs and all, so that anyone who reads it will hear the clack of the carriage.

The kettle has finally whistled. I will post this with the first boat, if there is one.

Yours in salt and typeface, Hester

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