Black script lettering tattoo reading A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, with small stars and a wand line, on the side of the ribs.

Quote lettering with stars on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a two-line quote in black script lettering, with the first line reading A Dream is a Wish and the second reading Your Heart Makes. A wand-like stroke and small scattered stars sit to the right of the text. The ink is solid black on a light skin tone, and the photo is taken straight on with the image cropped around the torso.

Lettering Ribs Quote Script Lettering Wand Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pargeter wanted the sign for the Starlight Carousel repainted before the season, and he wanted it to shout. I had six days, a tin of black enamel and the sable brush my father left me, the one with the bent handle. I started with the big letters, leaning forward as if they were late for a train, and by the Thursday the front of the booth said what it needed to say in a script the gulls could read.

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The trouble was the second line. Pargeter kept coming by with his cigarette and his opinions. 'Make it sparkle,' he said. 'Nobody buys a ticket for a sentence.' So I drew a wand down the right-hand edge, a thin stroke with a flick at the tip, and I scattered stars off it as if I were tossing sugar. He thought that was too much. I thought it was the only honest bit on the board.

Hal's girl, Lottie, came to stand under the sign on the last night of painting, sucking a lolly, her nan's cagoule buttoned wrong. She sounded out the words slowly, one at a time, the way children do when they're taking a thing seriously. Then she asked whether the stars came off the wand or the wand came off the stars. I told her I'd never worked out which, and she nodded as though that was the right answer.

The carousel turned all summer. Pargeter died in October with the sign still bright, and the booth was sold to a man from Chatham who never looked up at it. I like to think the stars are still there under his new coat, flicking off the edge of the board, waiting for someone small enough to ask which came first.