Black and white photo of a person lying on a bed in underwear, showing a black lettering tattoo of lines of text along the side of the ribs.

Lettering tattoo on the side of a torso

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on their side in bed with the face out of frame, wearing dark underwear and white bedding. A black lettering tattoo of several lines of text runs diagonally across the side of the torso above the hip. The black and white photograph is softly lit, with the sheets and pillows filling much of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Text Lettering Bed

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last working press in Haldon Row sat under a skylight that leaked whenever the wind came off the reservoir, so Mrs Okonedo kept a bucket beside the forme and a bowl of lead slugs on the sill. I was sixteen when she let me set my first line. It was nothing grand, four words from a ration card, but she made me read it backwards in the composing stick until my eyes ached. Then she tipped the whole thing onto the bed and said, that is how the world sees your words, so be sure.

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The lines had to run on a slant because the bed had warped in the damp, and Mrs Okonedo would not replane it. She said a crooked line was honest about the floor it stood on. We printed the same ration notice for three months, the slope steepening each week as the wood gave way, until the lettering climbed the page like a stair. Nobody in the district read it, but the council clerks came for a copy each, folded it into their coats and walked off looking pleased with themselves.

When the water came up the lane that autumn, we carried the type out in apple crates. Mrs Okonedo would not let me take the bucket. She took the big brass quoin instead and sat on the step with her knees drawn up, holding it in her lap while I counted the cases twice. Later I asked why she bothered with a press at all when anyone could scratch words on a wall for nothing. She laughed and said a wall never makes you wait for the ink to dry.

Last spring I set her name in the same slanting measure, printed it on a single sheet and pinned it above the bench where the bucket used to hang. The lines still climb towards the window. I have stopped apologising for them.