Fine line black script reading memento mori running vertically along the ribs of a woman whose black top is pulled up to the side.

Memento mori script on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A thin, flowing black script reading memento mori runs vertically along the side of the ribcage, with the words set close together and the letters joined by delicate connecting strokes. The ink is a single dark tone with no shading, and the lines are sharp and even. The woman is photographed from behind with her face out of frame, holding a black sleeveless top up beside the tattoo against a pale, softly lit background.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Priya,

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You will laugh when you see the envelope, because it is the same blue Basildon Bond Mum made us use for thank-you notes. I found a box of it in the loft while Dad was clearing out the boiler cupboard. Your name was still on the back of one sheet, from the summer we were fifteen and ran off to the coast for a day and got soaked on the pier when the rain came in sideways.

I nearly didn't come to the reunion, if I'm honest. Mr Hollis has died, did you hear? The school sent round a card for his family, and I sat in the car outside the Co-op for twenty minutes with the biro in my hand, trying to think what you write to a man who once kept me behind for drawing skulls in my maths book. In the end I wrote the only thing he ever said at assembly that stuck: memento mori. Remember you will die. I thought he'd have liked that I used his own joke against him.

So I'm writing to you because you're the one I'd want to stand next to in the hall, pretending to recognise people, with a paper cup of warm wine. Bring the photo from the pier if you still have it. I'll bring the bus ticket I kept, the one with the crease right through the date.

Don't make me walk into that room alone. Meet me by the urn at seven, and if we're both too sensible to stay past nine, we can walk down to the sea and watch the lights on the water. Hollis would call that a waste of an evening. I'd call it the only thing worth remembering.

Yours, Jo

P.S. I've kept the ticket in the same pocket of my handbag for twenty years. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the best thing I've got.