Black serif lettering tattoo on the ribs reading 'If you don't swim you'll drown', with a white shirt pulled up beside it.

Quote tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A two-line quote in black serif lettering sits on the side of the ribcage, with the words 'If you don't swim you'll drown' set in a typewriter-style font. The ink is solid black with crisp edges, and the skin around it is smooth and evenly lit. A white shirt is pulled up at the left and a hand wearing a gold ring is visible at the top of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Quote Text Word Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Board's typewriter has a sticking e, so you learn to strike it twice and trust the paper to forgive you. Mr Pell wants the notice for the mill sluice by four o'clock, and the line he has given you is the one he has been repeating all week over his tea: If you don't swim you'll drown. He says it is not a threat, only the plain arithmetic of the Fens, where the dykes stand higher than the cottage roofs and the children learn to paddle before they learn their letters.

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You type it out fair, one card for each post, and the apostrophes come out crooked on the first three, so you start again. Outside, the lads from the lock are shouting across the water, and somebody's dog is barking at the far bank where the drain runs black. Your mother stood at that sluice in March of '47 and watched the water take the Carrow boy, who could not swim, who had been told often enough and never believed it was meant for him.

When the last card is done you do not pin it to the post. You put it in your coat pocket and carry it home past the chapel with the cracked bell, and you lay it on the kitchen table beside the loaf. Your brother reads it aloud in his slow voice, moving his lips over each word the way he does with anything printed. He asks whether you wrote it. You tell him you only typed it. He nods as though that settles something, then goes out to the yard to look for his old trunks.