Black lettering tattoo of overlapping circles labelled with pronouns such as THEY, I, YOU, WE and ME, on the inside of a forearm, in a lettering and geometric style.

Venn diagram of pronouns on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Overlapping black outline circles form a Venn-style diagram, with the words THEY, I, YOU, WE and ME in capitals and smaller words such as he, the walrus and the eggman inside the overlaps. The bold sans-serif lettering and clean, even linework are shown in black ink only. The photo is taken straight on, with framed flash art on a wall behind the arm.

Lettering Geometric Forearm Circle Text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the fourteenth floor of Harrow Point could agree on which flat was whose, so the caretaker drew them a diagram on the lift wall with a marker pen: five circles, all overlapping, and a word in each. The children thought it was a game. The old men thought it was a map of the afterlife. Only Ruth in 1407 understood that the circles were doors.

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Where two circles met, a person could be both things at once. Stand in the place marked WE and the lift opened onto a landing with two doormats. Stand in the little ring labelled the walrus and you could hear a cello through the wall, though nobody on the block owned one. The eggman sold eggs from a van on Thursdays and always gave change in coins that were warm from his pocket.

Ruth's brother had gone missing in the overlap between I and HE three winters back. The council said he had moved to Margate. Ruth went up every evening with a tin of shortbread and knocked on the wall where the circles crossed, and every evening the wall knocked back, once, like a lazy man tapping time to a song he half remembered.

On the night the lift stuck between floors, she pressed her palm flat on the steel and said YOU, clearly, the way you would call a dog in from the rain. The car shuddered. Her brother's voice came back from the far side of the diagram, saying I am here, which is not the same as I am home, and the difference was the whole of the matter. She climbed out onto the landing marked ME, and for once the doors closed behind her and stayed closed.