Black script lettering of a quote runs down the side of the ribs, framed by two outlined hearts and small stars, shown in a sepia-toned photo.

Quote lettering with two hearts on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A handwritten-style quote in black ink runs vertically down the side of the torso, with a heart outline at the top and another at the bottom, plus a cluster of small star marks beside the lines. The lettering uses fine, slightly uneven strokes, while the hearts have a bolder outline. The photo has a warm sepia tone, and the text fills the centre of the frame against the curve of the skin.

Lettering Ribs Quote Script Heart Star Text

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

Dad never said the words in our house. He said the bins were out, that the gutter had come down again, that there was a flask on the step if I wanted it before the bus. For thirty-four years there was a flask on the step. I stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing a clock on the wall.

Keep reading

When he died in March, my mother asked me to sort the shed, and I found a shoebox under the workbench. Inside were index cards, hundreds of them, held with bulldog clips. Each one was dated in his square capitals. Flask, Mon. Fixed Mrs Pryce's hinge. Drove Ruth to the dentist, she was cross about it. Scraped the car. Took the bins out before she woke. Some cards were only a single word: Soup. Some were just a tick.

I read them at the kitchen table with the radio off. Near the middle of the box, from a year when I had been sulking through my A levels, I found a card that said: Sat up with her, she couldn't sleep, told her about the stars. I did not remember it. He had kept it anyway, the way you keep receipts for things you would never have thought to count.

I went back to the shed the next morning and filled a flask with tea, too strong, the way he liked it, and left it on the step for my mother. Then I bought a shoebox of my own.