Black fine line tattoo of a postmark stamp reading New York NY 9 DEC 1994 beside wavy cancellation lines on the side of the ribs.

Postmark stamp on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of a postal postmark sits on the side of the ribs. The circular stamp on the left has lettering around its edge and a date in the centre, beside a set of wavy cancellation lines to the right. The fine, even linework is set against pale skin with a dark top at the upper edge of the frame.

Fine line Ribs Wavy line Lettering Date

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain had been falling on the market square since dawn, and Ada Penhale was still standing under the post stall's awning when the boy came running with the envelope. It was thin blue airmail paper, soft at the corners from being carried against a wet coat, and the stamp had been struck so hard the ink had bled into the paper in a ring. A carter had found it wedged behind a crate of turnips at the far end of the market, the boy said, and it had likely been there since before the frost.

Keep reading

Ada turned it over. The postmark read NEW YORK NY, and beneath it the date, 9 DEC 1994, sat in the middle like a coin in a purse. Three wavy lines ran across the stamp to stop it being used twice, the way her father had taught her to cancel a bad franc. She had cut the same lines into the rubber of her own stamp for thirty years, and she knew a letter did not lie about a market town for long without someone coming to fetch it.

She did not open it. The post goes to the one whose name is on it, and the rain had no say in that. She walked the length of the square with the envelope inside her shawl, past the cheese stall and the ribbon man, until she reached the house with green shutters where Marguerite Adair had been watching the road for eleven years. When she held it out, the rain eased, and the old woman took the letter without a word, pressing her thumb to the ring of ink as though it were still warm.