Close-up of the word wanderlust in a black serif typewriter-style lettering tattoo across the middle segment of a finger, on a pale hand against a plain background.

Wanderlust lettering on a finger

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised against a plain light background, with the word wanderlust tattooed in black ink across the middle segment of one finger. The lettering uses a typewriter-style serif font with crisp, even linework and solid black fill. The composition is tightly focused on the hand, and the dark nail polish contrasts with the pale skin.

Lettering Hand Wanderlust Word Text Finger

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The carbon paper has gone grey at the edges again, so I hold the sheet up to the window before I type the Lisbon fare. Mr Pargeter likes his tickets clean. Every key I strike on the Imperial leaves a small bruise in the paper, and when the bell rings at the end of the line it sounds like a ship's horn in that back office.

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At lunch I type practice lines on the spare sheets, because the girls in the typing pool swear speed comes from repetition. Mostly it is station names. Hendaye. Valparaiso. Then one wet Thursday I type a word that appears on no timetable, just to see how the letters sit together on the roller: wanderlust. Mr Pargeter finds it in the bin and reads it aloud in his Sunday voice, as if it were a complaint he had heard of but never caught.

He spends the next month sending me out with invoices and never once asks where I've been. I learn the shapes of the ports from the stamps on the parcels. Then in March the Ardent Line cancels a sailing, and there is a berth left on the Porto boat with my name on the manifest, which I had typed myself, and nobody thought to check.

I buy the ticket at the counter, one way, and walk back past the office window with the receipt folded in my glove. The spoiled sheet is still pinned under the Imperial's roller where I left it, the word in black capitals and lowercase, the way the machine wanted it. I leave it there for Mr Pargeter to find.