Black script lettering tattoo of a quote running across the ribs and side of a person's back, photographed from behind.

Script quote tattoo along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph taken from behind shows a person's bare back and side with a line of black cursive script tattooed diagonally across the ribs. The head is out of frame and the person wears a loose white top pulled down at the shoulder. The lettering is fine and even with a soft, warm, slightly faded tone across the image.

Lettering Ribs Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas Rennie had been scrubbing the same pan since the second bell, because the galley of the Halcyon Vesper was the only room aboard where a man could be alone without being on watch. The bulkhead lamp swung on its hook and threw the shadow of the knife rack back and forth across the steel. Somebody had pencilled a few lines of verse above the sink years ago, most of it rubbed away by soap and steam, and he knew what was left without wanting to.

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The letter had come in Gibraltar, forwarded twice, its envelope soft from handling. Doris Pell, who had baked the bread on the last voyage and once taught him to fold pastry without tearing it, wrote in a round hand that she was marrying a dock foreman from Hull and hoped he would not think badly of her for not waiting. He had read it on the stern rail with the wind pulling at the page. He had not written back. Every reply he began sounded like a man on his knees, so he left the paper in his locker and went back to the galley.

At four he climbed the ladder to the boat deck with a mug of stewed tea. The sky over the Bay of Biscay was clear enough to show the whole spill of the Milky Way, and he stood there long enough for the tea to go cold. He thought of the verse above the sink and realised it had never asked for anything. It only said the stars were still there, and that a man could stand under them and keep his dignity.

Back in the galley he took the letter out, smoothed it on the chopping board and wrote one line on the back in pencil: I am well, and the sky is open. He folded it twice, tucked it into the tin with the spare fuses and shut the lid. Outside, the lamp steadied on its hook for the first time that night.