Black script lettering with blue shading, reading I'd risk the fall just to know how it feels to fly, tattooed diagonally along a side rib.

Script quote along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A diagonal line of cursive script runs down the side of the ribs, reading a phrase about risking a fall to learn how flying feels. The letters have black outlines and grey shading, with blue tones on some strokes that add depth against the skin. The lettering sits on a plain skin tone, with a blurred indoor background and denim visible at the lower edge of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Script Quote Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the speeches started, the marquee had begun to lift at its corners, canvas snapping like a sail, and you were the only one at table nine who had noticed the wind getting up. Your grandmother Edie, who had climbed church spires for the council until she was sixty, pressed a folded card into your hand and nodded towards the stage. "You read it," she said. "Your voice carries."

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The card was in her looping hand, the same ink she used on birthday envelopes. It said she had never once been brave enough to take the scaffold stairs two at a time, and that the best thing she ever did was tell a man on the Hastings pier she would marry him if he came down in one piece. You had heard that story a hundred times, but never with the line that closed the card: I'd risk the fall just to know how it feels to fly.

You stood. The bride looked up, her fingers still laced through the groom's. Outside, a tent pole groaned and somebody shrieked with laughter. You read the line slowly, and when you reached the end the wind dropped as if someone had shut a door, and the whole marquee went quiet enough to hear the bunting tick against the poles.

Edie reached for her glass, pleased, and her hand was steady. "Now you're the one who has to jump," she said, and winked, and for once you did not argue with her.