Black ink tattoo of the words Only the good die young above a flock of small birds on the ribs, with a pink bra visible at the top of the frame.

Script quote and birds on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the words Only the good die young in a slanted serif script running across the side of the ribs. A flock of small black bird silhouettes rises from beneath the words and curves upwards to the right, with the largest bird at the top. The ink is solid black with no shading, and the skin is photographed in soft, even indoor light from a close angle.

Lettering Ribs Bird Flock Script Quote Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are sixteen the summer the colliery whistle goes quiet for good, and your grandfather Albert keeps his racing pigeons in a coop built from an old pit-prop crate behind the terrace in Pellhill. Every Saturday you carry the baskets up the lane with him, and every Saturday he says the same thing to the men outside the bookies: only the good die young, and he has no intention of being either.

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The birds are the only thing in the village that still goes up. You learn to clap the basket lid, read the rings on their legs, and log times in a green ledger that smells of coal dust. Albert's hands shake now, so you set the clock on the release box yourself, and he stands at the gap in the hedge watching the sky, his lips moving as if he is counting something the rest of you cannot see.

The race in July is the last one he enters. Sixty birds go off from Dunmoor fields at dawn, and the flock climbs over the slag heap in a loose wedge that bends north, then east, the way the coal trains used to run. You watch the big grey cock break from the front and turn back, circling the spoil heap as though it is looking for stragglers.

The ledger shows the bird came in third, but you tell Albert it came in first, as far as the one who matters is concerned. He laughs until he coughs, then writes it down in pencil, because pencil is for things you might have to change. The coop door stands open, the birds come down one by one onto the boards, and you count them aloud until the number is right.