Black script lettering tattooed across the ribs in a curved, stacked quotation, in a lettering style on a side torso.

Script quotation along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a multi-line quotation in flowing black script tattooed on the side of the torso, following the curve of the ribs. The letterforms use smooth, consistent linework with bold strokes and decorative loops on the capitals. The ink is solid black on warm skin, and the lines are arranged in a gently arched block that fills most of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Quote Text Script

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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

The guard at the post has stamped your passport twice already, once for the bus and once for the lorry, and now he holds it up to the lamp as if the photograph might have changed its mind. Snow is coming sideways off the birches. Beyond the barrier the road runs into a forest so dark it seems to have been poured there.

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"Business?" he asks, in English that has been practised on lorry drivers. You tell him about the sawmill job, the letter from the foreman, the cousin who promised a bed. Every word is true except the last, and he knows it and lets it go, because it is three in the morning and the snow is thickening into something that will close the road by dawn.

Then the barrier lifts and the car rolls onto the cleared tarmac. Your hands stay at ten and two. The trees press in from both sides, silver in the headlights and then black again, and somewhere past the second bend a hare crosses and is gone. You count the kilometres on the dashboard the way your mother counted her rosary: one bead for each thing you have to carry across.

The cousin's house has a single light on. The door opens before your knuckles finish falling, and nobody asks you anything at all. You stand on the step with snow settling on your shoulders, and you find you are still keeping count.