Black and grey fine line tattoo of four birds in flight above the script words life is a beautiful struggle, across the ribs.

Birds and script quote on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Four small bird silhouettes fly in a loose arc above the words "life is a beautiful struggle" written in a cursive script. The linework is fine and mostly solid black, with no shading beyond the strokes themselves. The photograph is black and white, showing the tattoo across pale skin on the side of the torso with the text running horizontally through the centre of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Bird Script Quote Text Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad painted the lettering on the fair's banners, and he never once spelled a word the way the sign-writer's manual said. Every winter at the Cheltenham quarters he sat on an upturned crate with his tin of black enamel and a brush no thicker than a hair, saying each word aloud before he put it down. The one that stuck was on the side of the lorry: life is a beautiful struggle. Mum called it a Sunday school sentiment. Dad said it was a fairground sentiment, which was worse.

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The year the rain came sideways through Shrewsbury, the shooting gallery lost its birds. Four tin silhouettes hung on a wire under the canopy, and when a gust tore the wire loose, they went off into the sodden field as if they'd been waiting all season. I chased them in my wellies. I found three by the hawthorn hedge. The fourth had gone into the river and come out again at the weir, tail up, looking pleased with itself.

Dad didn't scold. He sat me on the crate with the tin and made me copy the words onto a board until my hand ached. I kept getting the t in struggle wrong, the crossbar sliding off the stem like a dropped ribbon. He laughed and said the beautiful part was the wobble, that a line which never shakes has never been drawn by anyone who's been out in the weather.

We hung the birds back up before the afternoon crowd, all four of them turning on the wire whenever the wind came through, one of them a little dented. Dad never mentioned the quote again. Most evenings after that, I stood on the caravan step and counted them against the lights of the big wheel, four dark shapes in a loose arc above his lettering, until somebody came to take the canopy down.