Close photograph of a fine line script quote reading without struggle there is no progress in black ink on the side of a torso, near the ribs.

Script quote along the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a handwritten script quote in black ink reading without struggle there is no progress, set in three staggered lines across the side of the torso. The linework is thin and even, with the letters slanting diagonally across the skin. The image is in black and grey with a soft, natural focus, and a dark fabric edge runs across the upper left of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Quote Script Word Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gale had taken the old board off its hooks on the Tuesday, and by Thursday Tom Harrow had ruined three blanks of good pine. Agnes Crane watched him from the back step of the Marine House, her tea going cold in its saucer. "You're pressing," she said. "The brush wants to be carried, not shoved."

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He wiped the bristles on a rag and tried again, the letters leaning and crowding until the word struggle looked like a fence that had been knocked sideways. The sea was grey beyond the promenade railings, and lodgers' boots clattered up and down the front steps. Agnes had kept the house for thirty-one years, since Bert went out past the Ness and didn't come back, and she had never once let anyone hurry a line.

"Write it the way your gran wrote the ledgers," she said, and went inside, leaving him the tin of gold leaf and a stub of pencil. He sat on an upturned crate until the light changed. When he finally drew the first guideline he let his wrist ride loose, the thin strokes slanting down the board like rain on a window, each word running into the next without fuss.

By dusk the sign hung above the door, facing the sea, the wet paint catching the last of the sun. Agnes came out with her shawl and read it twice, moving her lips. Tom waited for her to mention the crooked g. She only tapped the frame once, the way you might tap a barometer that has finally started to fall, and went in to put the kettle on.