Black script lettering reading Family is forever, with a looping infinity-style swash, on the side of the torso, in a Lettering style.

Family is forever script on the side of the torso

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads Family is forever in black cursive script, with the word Family in a larger flowing hand and is forever in smaller joined lettering beneath it. A long looping swash links the words, and a pale raised line crosses the first letters, possibly a scar or healing mark. The image is a close crop in greyscale-like tones against a dark garment at the top left.

Lettering Ribs Family Forever Script Infinity Swash

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You arrive late, which is how you always arrived, and the sports hall has already sorted itself into the old pecking order: the netball captains by the trophy cabinet, the lads who smoked behind the bike sheds clustered near the urn. Someone has pinned a banner that says ASHFIELD 1994-1999 in letters that have begun to curl at the corners. Your badge says Lou Harrow and carries a photograph of a girl with a fringe you would not admit to now.

Keep reading

Dell is already there, which surprises nobody. She still stands like someone waiting to be told off, arms folded, one hip cocked. You haven't spoken since the summer your dad's van went into the canal and her mum took you both in for three months. She sees you, lifts her chin, and then, because she has never once in her life left a thing unsaid, she says, "You still owe me a Walkman."

You laugh harder than the joke deserves. On the wall of the old music room someone has put up a display of Year Nine photographs, and there you both are, leaning on the same railing with a gap between you the width of a bus shelter. Beneath them, in the careful capitals of the games mistress, someone has written FAMILY IS FOREVER, and a looping line has been drawn under it that runs off the edge of the card. You trace it with a finger, the way you used to trace your mum's signature on permission slips, and Dell says, quite quietly, "Go on then. Tell me where you've been."