Fine line black script reading most ardently on the side of the ribs, photographed on pale skin beside a green top.

Most ardently script on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads "most ardently" in a flowing, joined script in black ink. The linework is thin and even, with the letters sitting in a single horizontal line across the skin. The photo shows only grey-black ink on pale skin, with a green top and a zip visible at the edges.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Text Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Read it again, Tom, slower, because the gulls are louder than Mrs Cardew and I want every word to reach the back of the quay. Last line first. Most ardently. That was how Josiah Rowe ended his letters from the Ardent, a herring drifter out of Porthcarrow, and it was the only fancy thing about him. He wrote in pencil on the backs of tide tables and never once spelt the boat's name right.

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The letters came every ten days for three winters, each one stiff with salt and smelling of the hold. Maggie Rowe kept them in a biscuit tin under the stairs and read them to nobody but the cat. Then in February the Ardent came in with four men aboard instead of seven, and the skipper stood in her kitchen with his cap in his hands and said the weather had taken the rest.

The last letter arrived in March, postmarked a week after the boat was posted lost. Four lines, the pencil gone faint. Mending nets at Skerries. Tell the children the gulls here are as bold as bishops. Keep the lamp lit. Most ardently.

Mrs Cardew says it is a sad thing to read aloud on a windy quay, and she is right, but the lamp is still lit in Maggie's window and you may make of that what you like. Now go and fetch the tide tables, boy, and we will see whether the Ardent is due in on Thursday.