Black lettering tattoo of a single word in ornate looping script, placed on the side of the ribs with a green striped top and red fabric visible.

Ornate script word on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single word is set in ornate, looping script with outlined and filled letterforms, sitting horizontally across the torso. The linework is dark and fairly bold, with the shading inside the letters kept solid and grey-black. The composition is close and centred on the tattoo, with a hand with purple nail polish at the left edge and a green striped top and red fabric framing the skin.

Lettering Ribs Word Script Lettering Loop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been at it since seven, so the stall sheets sagged and the gold on the letters I'd done for Mrs Okafor's fishmonger sign had started to bloom at the edges. I stood under the awning with a flask of tea going cold and watched a boy in a yellow cagoule try to read the sign upside down.

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Dad taught me the looping hand in the back of this same market, on a board propped against the tripe barrels. You don't draw the loops first, he said. You let the word tell you where it wants to curl. Outline it in black enamel, fill the body of each letter solid, then let the ornaments go round like a pair of hands holding on. Most people looked at the swashes and thought they were decoration. He said they were the bit that kept the word from falling off the board.

On Tuesday a woman came in with a sheet of paper folded into quarters and asked me to put a word on the door of her new bakery. She'd written it in pencil three times, each attempt more careful than the last. I did it in the dry corner of the stall with the brush loaded tight, the grey-black going down thick and steady while the rain drummed the tarp. She watched the second loop close and said, that's the one, and didn't say anything else.

Now the wet has got under the awning and into my sleeve, and the sign is still up. The paint held. Every loop closed where I left it, and at dusk the boy came back with his mum, read the word the right way round, and pointed.