Fine line script tattoo reading Carpe Diem on the side of a person's ribs, in warm evening light.

Carpe Diem script on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small dark script tattoo reading Carpe Diem sits on the left side of the ribcage, below a black top worn with one arm folded across the torso. The lettering is delicate, with thin, flowing strokes and a slight slant, and the ink looks like a single dark tone. The warm low sun and stone wall behind the subject give the photo an orange cast, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Carpe diem Script Lettering Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Harrow wanted the words cut small, she said, because the stone would be looked at by birds more than by people. Ada Pell had her chisel against the first stroke of the C before she had finished asking whose it was for. The old man had died in March, and his son had brought a scrap of paper folded into quarters, the wording written in pencil in a hand that leant backwards as if it were trying to leave the room.

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She worked on the bench under the lean-to, where the light came in sideways through the beech trees at the edge of Thornwick. Lettering was a matter of patience. You drew the loops with a steel nib dipped in red lead, then let the mallet do the rest, tap after tap, so the strokes thinned where the hand lifted and swelled where it pressed. The swash on the capital D she made three times before it sat right. The paper had said Carpe Diem, and the son had asked whether it was Latin for something gentle. Ada told him it meant pick the day up while it is still warm.

When the stone was set in the churchyard, she walked back along the forest path with dust still on her sleeves. A fox crossed in front of her, unhurried, and stopped on the bank to look at her as though she owed it a sentence. She thought about the old man, who had kept bees and, the village said, never once hurried anything.

That night she sat by the window with the lamp off and wrote out the two words on the back of an invoice, slanting them the way his son's pencil had, until the ink ran out before the final m.