Black and grey shaded tattoo of a Holy Bible with a ribbon bookmark on a forearm, with other tattoos partly visible above and to the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Holy Bible tattoo on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded tattoo of a closed Holy Bible, with the words HOLY BIBLE on the cover and a ribbon bookmark hanging from the bottom edge. The book is rendered in soft greys with fine linework on the edges and pages. Partial tattoos of a wing and fine line marks appear at the top and right of the frame, on a forearm photographed against a plain background.

Realism Forearm Book Wing Web

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The book came in on the 4.52 from Carlisle, wedged down the side of a seat where the cushion meets the armrest. Dilys Parry turned it over under the strip light of the lost property room and read the words on the cover, HOLY BIBLE, the gilt long rubbed to grey. There was no name inside, no library stamp, no church label. Only a ribbon bookmark, frayed to a thread, hanging from the bottom edge as if somebody had been called away mid-sentence.

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She logged it at ten past five, between a pushchair and a single green glove, and told herself that would be the end of it. The rules said hold items ninety days. But the ribbon had dropped open on its own, and pressed against the page was a bus ticket from Thornley Junction dated 1987, with an address in Hollin Street pencilled on the back in careful capitals.

She posted a card to the address on the Friday. The reply came the following Tuesday in handwriting that wobbled across the envelope. Ivor Quine wrote that he had left the book on purpose, on the seat by the window, for whoever sat there next. His wife had read from it every night for forty years and he had not been able to open it since the funeral. He asked only that the finder read the marked page aloud to nobody in particular, and then put the ribbon back where it belonged.

Dilys did not know what she believed about any of it. But on her last evening at the counter she sat under the humming light, opened the book at the thread, and read the verse out loud to the empty shelves, slowly, the way you would read to someone who was tired and needed the words to go on a little longer.