Black typewriter-style lettering reading We live with the scars we choose, tattooed across the ribs on pale skin with reddened area around it.

Typewriter-style quote across the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of two lines of black typewriter-style lettering across the side of a torso, reading We live with the scars we choose. The letters are solid black ink with clean, even edges and no shading. The skin around the text looks reddened and slightly shiny, which suggests fresh or irritated skin, and dark fabric is visible across the top of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Quote Word Typewriter font Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the rain has come through the awning again, so the Remington is sulking under a bread bag and I am writing this on the back of a dry-cleaning ticket, which you will have to forgive. Saturday's crowd at the Shambles end was thin, just the usual pair of students hunting for a cheap portable and a man who walks the stalls every week asking if anyone still sells ribbon for the old Olivettis.

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The man who came to the stall on Thursday had a grey Olivetti in a cardboard box, the case cracked along one corner. He wanted every key struck clean, the bars straightened, the platen replaced if it needed it. I told him it would cost more than the machine was worth, and he laughed and said that was rather the point. When I opened the carriage to check the alignment, the lowercase e sat a hair higher than its neighbours and stuck every third time. I offered to file it down.

He shook his head. Leave it, he said, it has been like that since before my wife left, and I'm not having it tidied away. Then he sat on my stool, rolled a sheet of onion paper into the platen and typed slowly, the way people do when they expect the machine to answer back: we live with the scars we choose. The e lifted off the line like a small bird. He tore the page out, folded it twice and paid me in coins, every one of them damp from his pocket.

I left the e alone. It still catches on the page when I type your name, and I have decided I like it that way. Come up on the next train if you can, and bring your own ribbon, because I am down to the last spool.

Love, Dad