Black line drawing of an upright cross with the words 'my GOD'S NOT DEAD' set in a thin, hand-lettered typeface on the crossbar, shown as a flash design.

Cross design with 'my God's not dead' text

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A simple black cross, with a solid vertical bar and horizontal bar, is drawn on a plain white background. The words 'my GOD'S NOT DEAD' are set in a thin, hand-lettered typeface, with 'my' and 'NOT' on the upper line and 'GOD'S' and 'DEAD' on the lower line, placed either side of the upright. The image is flat and graphic, with no shading and no colour.

Lettering Cross Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are halfway through cutting the upright when Mrs Averill comes up the lane from the forest edge with a sack of oats under one arm and a folded paper in her apron pocket. She does not sit on the wall as the others do. She stands in the chip-dust and holds the paper out to you as if it might bite.

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The words are in her husband's hand, pencilled and smudged at the corners: my God's not dead. She wants them cut either side of a plain cross, the way the stone on the hill at Thornleigh was done, and she wants it finished before the first frost. You tell her the letters will want room. You measure the slab with your rule and a length of blackthorn, counting the gaps, and find the width splits neatly if the upright stands alone in the middle. The thin strokes will need a steadier hand than yours, so you practise on slate offcuts until your wrist aches and the lamp oil runs low.

Three weeks later the stone goes up under the oaks where the path bends toward the village. You walk out at dusk with the lamp swinging, and from the lane the two lines read clean on either side of the stem: my above GOD'S, NOT above DEAD. Mrs Averill comes out with a candle and stands a while without speaking. Then she sets the oats down in the grass, the way a person sets down a thing that no longer needs carrying, and goes home.

On the Sunday after, you take the long way back through the trees. The cross stands pale in the moss, the upright plumb, and the small letters sit as level as a bubble in a spirit level. You lay your palm flat on the cold face and feel the cut edges, every one of them still sharp.