Black and grey ornate cross tattoo with scrollwork and the words Destemido and Sobrevivíente, shown on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Ornate cross with lettering on upper back

Neo-trad · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large cross with baroque scrollwork and curled ends sits on the upper back, with the words DESTEMIDO running across the arms and SOBREVIVIENTE running down the upright. The cross is filled with dark shading and fine highlights, and the lettering is cut into the black fill in light lines. The image is a close, straight-on photo of the back with only the top of the head visible and no face shown.

Neo-trad Back Cross Scrollwork Filigree Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Querido Tomás, the rain came down the Quebrada last night and I lay awake thinking of you under the mountain at Lomas Negras, counting the props the way your father taught you. Señora Ibarra has finished the cross for the chapel gate. You will laugh, but it is the most vain piece of iron in the valley, with curls at every arm like frost on the bus windows in June. Efraín worked on it all through the strike, bent over the forge until his eyebrows were gone.

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It was meant to be a grave marker for Ruperto Vega, the boy whose name was read out first when the shaft came down. The widow wanted his name cut into the upright, and the men argued about the words for a week in the back of the cantina. Efraín listened to all of them, then took his chisel to the black paint and cut two lines instead. DESTEMIDO runs across the arms, and SOBREVIVIENTE runs down the stem where a name would normally go. He said a cross for a dead man should not be the only thing on the hill that tells the truth about the living.

Ruperto's mother came up to see it and stood there a long time with her hand on the scrollwork. Then she said the words were right, only that the cross should stand by the gate where the men pass going down, so that they would see it every shift. So it stands there now, and nobody has asked whether it is for the dead or for the ones who walked out.

Come Sunday and carry the other end with Efraín. The iron is heavier than you remember, and I want you to be the one who lifts it into the light. Bring your mother's rosary. She will want to check the curls are straight.

Tu tía, Marisol