Close photo of a small fine line script tattoo on the side of the ribs, in black ink, with a white swimsuit at the edge of the frame.

Fine line script tattoo on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of short handwritten-style words in thin dark ink runs along the side of the ribcage, with a few letters and a flourish at the end. A second faint line of script is visible higher up on the side of the upper arm or torso at the top right. The linework is delicate and the ink is black with no colour, and the warm, softly lit skin sits against a white swimsuit and a pale background.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Word Handwriting

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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 find the logbook on the second shelf of the lantern room, the one nobody has opened since your father's hands stopped being steady. Its pages smell of paraffin and salt. For thirty-one years he wrote the same few words in pencil each night, short as a ship's bell: fog, hold, wait. You had always thought of them as a dull record. Tonight the wind has got under the door, the lamp below is ticking as it cools, and you read the last entry twice.

Keep reading

It is not in pencil. It is in brown ink from the bottle he kept for the chart table, and it is dated the day before the relief boat came for him. Beneath the words is a small curl, the flourish he always drew under his name, so light the nib barely touched the paper. Fog lifted at four. Saw the lights of the mainland. Tell her to wait for me at the slip.

You go down the spiral stairs with the book under your arm, counting the steps the way you did as a child, one hundred and sixty-two of them, and at the bottom you push open the door onto the slip. The tide is making. The dinghies knock together in the harbour like someone tapping a glass, and you think of how he must have known the page would be read by someone standing exactly where you stand now.

You do not wait for the relief boat or the fog. You take the oars from the shed and push off, and the ink on the page is still so fresh you could swear it smells of him. Behind you the beam goes round, as it always has, and for once you do not count the turns.