Fine line black script tattoo running vertically down the side of the ribs, above the waistband of denim shorts.

Script quote along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A thin, dark cursive script runs in a gentle curve down the left side of a person's ribcage, starting near the bottom of a patterned top. The opening words appear to read "I love you", but the rest is partly hard to make out at this size. The ink is black, the skin is evenly lit, and the lettering sits off-centre, following the curve of the torso.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Script Quote Handwriting

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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

Mind the step, it's loose, and don't touch the net on that hook, that's Aggie's, she'll have your fingers for it. Right, you've come for the letter. Everyone in Porthkennack knows about Ned Carew's letter, though none of them has read the whole of it, because the rain got into the quay-side pocket where Ruth kept it and the ink ran like a dropped thread. What survives is a curl of writing that slopes down the page toward the corner, as if the words had a train to catch.

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The first part is plain enough. I love you, it says, in a hand so careful it looks like it was copied from a schoolbook. After that the line wanders off into the damp and only fragments come up through the paper: a letter that might be a g, a loop that could be a y, and at the very end three dots, or maybe the marks of a thumb pressed against the wet ink. Ruth Carew read it on the slipway the morning the Rosalind went out past the breakwater, and she never once read it the same way twice.

The schoolmistress guessed it ended with and the tide is kind. The minister said it was a line from a psalm. Ruth said nothing for years, only folded the paper small and kept it in her coat lining, and every spring when the boats went out she'd hum a tune under her breath and stop it where the words ran out.

In April the Rosalind came back with her nets full and Ned at the tiller, grey at the temples and sunburnt by a sea nobody else had seen. He took the letter out of Ruth's hand on the quay, looked at it for a long moment, and laughed until he had to sit down on a bollard. He had only run out of ink, he said. The rest was going to be home, and he'd meant to write it on the way back, and then the rain came.