Black script lettering tattoo reading Fall down seven times, stand up eight, on the side of a ribcage.

Script quote on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a side torso showing a two-line script quote tattooed over the ribs, reading Fall down seven times above Stand up eight. The lettering is thin, flowing and mostly in dark grey or black ink with soft shading. The shallow depth of field keeps the warm, muted background out of focus, and the subject is framed at the waist above light-wash denim.

Lettering Ribs Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Before the church bell at the crossroads had rung five, Mara's ovens were cold again. The flour sack had split on the cart road, the starter had gone flat and sour in its crock, and the dog had got into the last of the salt butter. She sat on the step with her apron over her knees and counted what she had left, which was two hands, a bucket of water and a heap of stale heels nobody wanted.

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The old miller had sold her that flour on credit and given her the same advice he gave everyone who came to him with a ruined week. Fall down seven times, he said, and stand up eight. Mara had thought it a thing men said to children. But she was tired of sitting, so she stood, tipped the water into the trough and began again.

She failed the first loaf by letting it over-prove, and the second by slapping it too hard and tearing the skin. The third stuck to the peel. The fourth came out pale as a candle. By the seventh she had burned the bottoms black and was ready to throw the whole sack in the river. Then the grey light came over the field, and she stood at the oven door, opened it, and drew out eight loaves gold and blistered at the crust.

By the time the carts came down the road, the bakery smelled like the first warm morning of the year. The miller was the first through the door. He took one loaf, weighed it in his palm, and said nothing at all. When he left he paid her in full and set the coins on the table, one at a time, eight of them, and she laughed until she had to sit down.