Fine line black script tattoo reading Con tutto il cuore across the side ribs, just below the hem of a navy top.

Con tutto il cuore script on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the Italian phrase "Con tutto il cuore" written in thin black cursive script across the side of the torso, below the hem of a navy top. The linework is fine and even, with solid black ink and no shading or added colour. The text runs diagonally across the frame, rising slightly to the right, with the skin tone and soft lighting filling the rest of the composition.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Phrase Cursive

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ilse, the lamps in the lower ring have been dimmed to amber since the fourth shift, so I am writing this by the galley hatch where the light is good enough for a fountain pen, which is the only kind of pen the archive permits. Your last letter arrived in a cargo wrapper stamped with three different registries, and the seal had been broken and mended with tape. I forgave the tape. The handwriting had not changed at all, those thin looping letters leaning forward as if they were late for something.

Keep reading

I am in the archive now, copying the old ship's manifests for the hull council. Most of it is columns of freight. But in a crate marked for the nursery, folded inside a child's sketchbook, I found a card with a single line in careful cursive: Con tutto il cuore. Nobody on the council can read it without a dictionary, and the translation software keeps offering 'with all the heart' as though it were a warranty clause. I asked old Marek what he thought it meant. He said it was what you write when you cannot afford the longer letter.

So I have made a decision the council will not like. I am going to copy those four words by hand onto the inside of the dorsal plate, where no scanner will ever look. Forty centimetres of slender strokes, rising a little to the right, the way you always lean when you are pleased with yourself. If anyone asks, tell them it is a maintenance schedule. Write back soon, and tell me whether the kettle still rattles before it boils.