Black and grey script lettering reading Never regret anything that once made you smile across the ribs, with a hand resting above it.

Script quote tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a script quote tattoo running across the side of the ribcage, reading Never regret anything that once made you smile. The lettering is set in a fine, flowing cursive with soft shading, and the final word is partly cut off at the right edge of the frame. A hand with pale nail polish rests over the upper chest, and a white shirt is pulled aside below the tattoo.

Lettering Ribs Quote Script Text Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walter,

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Mother has not spoken to me since the Whit fair, and Mr Abbott at the chapel has taken to studying my boots whenever we pass on Market Street. I should be sorry for the fuss, but I find I am not, and since you were the only one who rode the Big Wheel with me, I thought you might be the one to hear it plainly.

Your letter arrived on Tuesday with the ticket stub folded inside, the one you kept from the pier, and on the back you had written out that line from Aunt Edith's almanac: Never regret anything that once made you smile. You underlined smile twice, the way Father used to underline the price of coal. I laughed at the kitchen table until Mother asked whether I had been drinking, which I had not, only coffee.

I have pinned the stub above the range where the steam keeps it curled. Each morning I read it before the kettle goes on, and each morning it seems a little less like a rule and a little more like a dare. Mother says a respectable girl does not keep a stranger's memory in her pocket, meaning the young man with the blue braces who sold us toffee apples. I do not have his name, and I do not want it. What I have is the sound of the wheel stopping at the top and the whole pier going quiet below us.

I am taking the Thursday boat to Liverpool with my good coat and one case. Tell Mother I will write when I am settled, and tell her also that I am smiling as I write this, which she will not believe, and which is nonetheless true.

Your loving sister, Hettie