Black and grey dreamcatcher with hanging feathers and a script quote tattooed along the side of the ribs.

Dreamcatcher and script quote on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dreamcatcher with three hoops and three feathers hangs diagonally down the side of the torso, with a script quote above it reading "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today". The linework is bold and the feathers are shaded in grey washes with fine detail on the plumes. The image is in black ink and greys, with the skin tone and a light top visible at the top edge of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Quote Script Hoop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The engine gave its last cough just below Culham, and now the barge drifts with the current while you stand at the stern with the long pole and the sun on your neck. Your father tied the dreamcatcher to the tiller bar years ago, a cheap thing from a stall in Oxford, and it knocks against the brass every time the hull swings. You have stopped hearing it. Today you hear nothing else. The lock keeper at Abingdon shuts his gates at six, and the church clock across the water already reads twenty past five.

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Dad would have had her moving by now. He would have coaxed the boat along the way he coaxed the cat off the coal sacks, low and patient, telling the river what it wanted to hear. You try it anyway, quietly, and the pole sinks into silt and stays there. A grey heron lifts from the reeds ahead, slow as a rumour, and the feathers on the bar lift with the wind in the same unhurried way. Behind you Jonah shouts that the boy from the boatyard has rung ahead and a tug is coming up on the lock side. You shout back that you need the pole, not news.

You set your shoulder against it, and the barge shifts once, then again, until the water is sliding past the hull faster than your pulse. You will make the gates. Dad used to say, laughing, that you should dream as if you'd live for ever, but live as if the day were your last, and that you should dream first so you knew what the living was for. You have never managed the order.

At the lock you tie up with fingers you can barely feel and climb onto the coping stone. Above the tiller the dreamcatcher swings, one feather loose, pointing upriver, as the gates groan open.