Black blackletter lettering tattoo on the side ribs reading Rise and rise again until lambs become lions, with purple fabric pulled up above it.

Blackletter quote on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a quotation set in black blackletter script across four staggered lines on the side of the torso. The lettering is solid black with crisp, even edges and little visible shading. The skin is light and the purple fabric at the top of the frame contrasts with the dark ink.

Lettering Ribs Quote Text Lion

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The guard holds your papers up to the sodium light and reads them twice, the way he might read a wanted notice. Behind you in the lorry the ewes shift and the lambs complain in thin voices. You have told him the lambs are for the Halloran croft, that they were born in the lower field, that the fence broke in March. All true, mostly.

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He asks what the lambs are called. You have not thought to name them, because naming is for keeping, and you have been keeping nothing since the valley flooded. You say the big one is Duncan, after your grandfather, and the rest have no names at all. He writes something in his book. You think of the sentence your mother stitched above the kitchen range, the one about rising and rising again until lambs become lions, and you put your palm against the cold steel of the door and feel the small bodies pressing together inside.

The barrier lifts. You drive slowly down the far side of the hill road with the window cracked, and in the mirror the checkpoint shrinks to a cluster of yellow lights. Somewhere back there the guard is still holding your passport under the lamp, deciding. Ahead the road bends toward a farm you have never seen, where a man you have never met is waiting with the gate already open.

At the first gate you drop the ramp and the lambs come down it one at a time, wobbling on the gravel like drunk men leaving a wedding. The biggest one shoves past your knees, plants its forelegs wide and bleats at the sky as if the whole journey has been your fault. You laugh, the first time in weeks, and the sound surprises you. It stands there, all legs and outrage, already learning how to get up again.