Black script lettering tattoo reading L'amore vince sempre running down the side of a ribcage in a black and white photo.

Italian script along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a bare side torso showing a script tattoo that reads "L'amore vince sempre" in a flowing italic hand, running vertically from the ribs toward the hip. A hand with black-tipped nails and a ring rests against the upper arm at the left of the frame. The shading is soft and the dark background sets off the pale skin and the thin ink lines.

Lettering Ribs Script Hand Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nonna Ottavia, I have finished the sign for Brindle's Dry Cleaners on Stokes Croft, and you will laugh, because the owner asked me to put a line of Italian under the name. He had seen the phrase on a tea towel and thought it sounded like good luck. I told him I would do it properly or not at all. L'amore vince sempre, in gold leaf on black, with an apostrophe no bigger than a fly.

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The hard part was the lean. Italic script wants to fall forward like someone late for a bus, and the board wants to stand still. I spent three evenings with a pencil and a sheet of tracing paper, drawing the capital L so it curled back on itself, the way you taught me on the margins of the church bulletin. Mr Brindle came in on the Friday to watch. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets and said nothing for so long that I thought I had spelt something wrong.

Then he told me his wife had written that line on the first card she ever sent him, in pencil, from a hospital ward in Parma where she was training as a nurse. She had been wrong about a great many things, he said, but not about that. He had kept the card in the till drawer for thirty-one years, and he asked whether I could lay the words on the board so the damp would not take them.

I said yes. I am writing this from the workshop with size still tacky on my thumb. Tell Zio Paolo the sign goes up on Monday, and tell him I did not make the L too grand. The old card is in my jacket now, folded in four. I think it will keep. Your loving grandson, Matteo.