Close-up of a fine black script tattoo reading 'still I rise' across the lower back, in black ink on warm skin.

Script quote 'still I rise' on lower back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black script reading 'still I rise' runs horizontally across the lower back, with the ascenders and flourishes drawn in thin, even linework. The ink is solid black with no shading, and the skin tone is warm, with soft lighting from the left. The tattoo sits near the centre of the frame above the waistband of dark trousers, with the spine running vertically beneath it.

Lettering Fine line Back Quote Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow shut the Tanner's Rest in on the Tuesday, and by Thursday the lane below the chapel had gone under a drift higher than the stable door. There were four of us in the house that week: myself, Marjorie who cooked, Mr Oakes who sold buttons and could not stop apologising for it, and Ida Lowe, who had walked up from the lambing sheds in a blizzard with no gloves and a sack of her father's wool on her back.

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The bread was the trouble. Our flour had been the last of the autumn milling, and the yeast had turned sour in the cold larder, so on Thursday night Marjorie set the dough by the range under a damp cloth and told us it would not come. Ida watched it with her red hands tucked under her arms. Above the flour bin, in my mother's pencil, someone had written still I rise in a hand that leaned like wind-bent hawthorn, and Ida asked who had written it. I told her it had been my mother, who used to say it to the loaves and to me when the rent was late.

Near midnight the cloth was humped and pale. We pressed our palms to the dough as if it were a sleeping animal, and Mr Oakes, who had said nothing all evening, said his wife had been the baker in their village and she used to sing to the bowls. Ida sang it, badly and low, until the room was warm enough to smell of yeast and wet wool. By morning the loaves had doubled, and the snowplough had cut the lane open to the road.

Ida took the first loaf down the hill with her coat buttoned to the chin. At the bend she turned and lifted it over her head like a lamp. I went back inside and left the pencilled words where they were, above the flour, for whoever came up the lane next.