Two photographs of rib tattoos: a red and grey bird beneath the script words Together forever never apart, and a shaded grey daisy beneath Maybe in distance but not in heart.

Bird and daisy rib tattoos with script quotes

Lettering · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

The left panel shows a realistically shaded bird with red and pink tones beneath black script reading Together forever never apart. The right panel shows a grey shaded daisy with soft tonal gradients beneath black script reading Maybe in distance but not in heart. Both tattoos sit on the ribs against bare skin, with the mixed colour and grey shading set against a plain background.

Lettering Realism Ribs Bird Daisy Script Quote Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pair came through my booth at twenty past six, one with a holdall and a ticket for the Calais sailing, the other with nothing but a phone and a bitten thumbnail. I stamped the passport of the one going and asked the purpose of her trip. She said, "Nursing contract, six months," in the flat voice people use for a thing they have rehearsed in the car. Her friend Noor stood behind the yellow line and did not cry, which I respected more than crying.

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While the queue shuffled behind them, they showed me pictures on the phone. One was a small bird, red at the breast, with the words Together forever never apart curling beneath it in careful black script. The other was a grey daisy with Maybe in distance but not in heart written over its petals. Noor had drawn the daisy. Her friend had chosen the bird. Neither of them would say which of the two ideas had come first, and I did not ask.

Noor asked me whether a bird could cross a border without papers. I told her birds were the only thing that never needed them, which was true and not much use to anyone standing in a queue. The leaving-passenger laughed at that, a short surprised sound, and then she was through the gate with her holdall bumping against the frame, and the ferry lights were already swinging out across the harbour.

Noor stayed at the rail of the barrier long after the ship had gone. When she finally turned round she held up her phone so I could see the two pictures side by side, the bird and the daisy, the red of one and the grey of the other, and I understood that the distance was the only part of the arrangement neither of them had drawn.