Teen gets tattoo which plays her late grandma's 'love you' message
- Published
A singer has shared footage showing her tattoo which plays a message from her late grandma saying "I love you".
Sakyrah Morris, from Chicago, had the sound wave from the voicemail inked onto her chest - which plays through a smart phone when it's placed over it.
"I had dreamed about it for a while so when I actually did it, it was unreal to hear her voice," she told Newsbeat.
A video of it playing was shared on Twitter and has been viewed more than three million times.
The tweet of Sakyrah scanning and playing the voicemail has gone viral., external
In the message, her grandma can be heard wishing her a happy birthday, before saying "I love you".
She tells her granddaughter: "You should be up and awake because it's your birthday, you rock-headed little kid."
With an app, Sakyrah is able to scan the waveform of the voice recording and play it back using image recognition.
"My grandmother passed away in May 2015 and my birthday was the month before in April," she told Newsbeat.
"She called me a little past midnight to wish me happy birthday and to tell me that she loved me.
"I had been holding onto that voicemail for what's been almost three years now and I got the idea recently to get it tattooed.
"I figured it'd be something permanent that would be across my heart to be more meaningful."
Sakyrah googled waveform tattoos and found a company which hires tattoo artists from across the US who can ink them on to people's skin.
Because of the precise nature of sound waves there's a registry of specially-trained tattooists who are able to perform the procedure.
And while it might look like the app is literally scanning the skin, it's not quite like that.
It stores an image of the waveform and when a similar image appears, it plays the audio file.
"She was the most amazing woman, always helping people in the community and making sure they were OK," says Sakyrah.
"It really made me happy to see what a positive impact my tattoo has had on others.
"I've had so many people tell me they're now thinking about keeping voicemails for the memories."
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