Black and grey lettering tattoo reading amor vincit omnia in cursive script along the ribs, with a hand wearing a ring resting above it.

Amor vincit omnia script on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black script tattoo reads amor vincit omnia in a flowing, connected cursive across the side of the torso. The linework is fine and even, with a slightly heavier stroke on the letters and a long crossbar on the t, and the ink is solid black with no shading. A hand with a ring and painted nails rests above the tattoo, and the black and white photograph is taken close up.

Lettering Ribs Latin phrase Script Ring Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hetty, you will laugh, but I have spent three evenings this week at the kitchen table with a pot of Indian ink and a nib no wider than a barley grain, copying one phrase over and over for Mr Tull, the sign-painter on Kirkgate. Amor vincit omnia, for the lintel of the new reading room. He wants it flowing, every letter holding hands with the next, as though the words had been written by someone in no hurry at all.

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The difficulty was the t. Mr Tull would not have it short. He took my third attempt, squinted at it under the gas lamp, and said the crossbar must run long, over the vincit and nearly to the o of omnia, or the whole line would fall apart like a dropped tray of cups. I told him the committee would not pay for a bar that reached across the wall. He said love was a long reach or it was nothing, and then he asked for a fourth attempt.

On the last night I finished it at half past eleven, with the lamp smoking and my fingers stiff as clothes pegs. I held the sheet to the window and the crossbar ran straight and fine as a single thread, carrying the eye from one word to the next. Mr Tull came round with his coat over his arm, looked for a long while, and paid me in shillings without a word of argument.

I walked home past the chapel and, for the first time all week, read the words aloud without tripping over them. The long bar of the t seemed to hold the whole line up, the way a good fence holds a field. I have kept the spoiled sheets in the drawer. Write soon, and tell me Father has stopped grumbling about the ink on the tablecloth.

Your loving sister, Ada