Black lettering tattoo on the side of the ribs, with the words HAPPY ENDING? above a four line poem and a handwritten style signature below.

Poem and signature on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the heading HAPPY ENDING? in capitals, followed by a four line verse set in a serif typeface, with a handwritten style signature beneath it. The lettering is crisp black linework with solid, even ink and no shading, set on pale skin with the text running horizontally across the ribs. The composition is tightly framed on the torso, with the text filling most of the image.

Lettering Ribs Text Quote Handwriting

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third stair, it's loose, and it's been loose since Ada Marr climbed it with a lantern in one hand and a kettle in the other. Gannet Point had her for thirty-one years, and she never once let anybody say the word ending in her kitchen. When the relief boat came across in October with a letter saying the lamp would run itself from the mainland, she read the letter twice and asked the young engineer whether he took sugar.

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Every night of those thirty-one years she wrote the same line in the log. The printed form said end of watch, but Ada wrote middle of watch in her square hand, followed by whatever the weather had done. Fishermen teased her for it. Her brother Walt had gone out past the skerries one March and never come home, and she told the harbour master she would keep the middle going for both of them, because the middle was where the work was and where a person could still be useful.

On the last evening the mainland men fitted their new switch and stood on the gallery with their clipboards, waiting for dusk. Ada climbed up after them with a paraffin lamp and a box of matches. The engineer told her the machine would do it better. She agreed that it would, and lit the wick anyway, turning the brass until the beam swung out over the black water.

Down on the quay, the boats coming in that night saw the old light sweep across them, steady as ever, and nobody could have said it was the end of anything. In the log, under the date, she wrote: middle of watch. Lamp lit by hand. Nobody drowned. Then she put the pen down and went to see about the kettle.