Close-up of a black fine line script tattoo reading Don't let the past steal your peace, placed on the ribs below a black and white bandeau top.

Script quote on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a torso wearing a black and white geometric bandeau top, with a line of black cursive script tattooed on the ribs just below the bust. The quote reads Don't let the past steal your peace, though the lettering is partly obscured at the left edge. The linework is thin and even, the ink is solid black with no colour, and the image is framed tightly on the torso.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Quote Script Text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Halina kept the ferry at Oster Ford, where two countries met at a rope strung across brown water. The customs men on both banks looked only at papers and never at the river. She took a fare from everyone, but never coin. People paid in whatever they were trying to carry across.

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One autumn a widow named Irena came down the bank with a lantern, a tin cup and a sack full of grievances about her husband's cousin, who had sold their orchard from under her. She tried to pay with the orchard's name. Halina told her the name was too wet to hold. Irena sat in the stern with the sack on her knees, and they went over slowly while the rope hissed through the pulleys.

Halina showed her the old rule. Whatever you carry over the water stays on the far bank if you let it go. Irena asked what the crossing would cost her then. Halina pointed at the tin box under the thwart, where a dozen small things lay: a brass key, a bent spoon, a letter with the ink run to grey. Irena took a carpenter's pencil from her apron and wrote on the wood beside her knee, in careful letters, Don't let the past steal your peace. Halina laughed and said that was not a fare, only a warning, and it cost nothing.

On the far bank Irena stepped off without the sack, and the sack stayed in the boat. Halina rowed back alone. By morning the pencil had rubbed away, but the tin box was heavier by one more thing, and when the next traveller asked the price, she told him the same as always: come back with less than you brought.