Fresh black script lettering with a starfish, dots and a shell on the side of the ribs, covered by clear wrap and tape.

Script quote with starfish and shell on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black script phrase runs across the side of the torso, with a small starfish above the first word and a shell with dots beside the last line. The linework is thin and even, and the shading is solid black ink with no colour. The tattoo is covered by a clear adhesive film and tape, and a hand and a grey top sit at the top of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Quote Starfish Shell Dot Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tin turned up behind the bait freezer when Mo was clearing the old chandlery for the landlord. Its lid had rusted into a ring of orange, and inside, wrapped in oilcloth gone stiff as card, were eleven letters addressed to Eileen Vance at the top of Pier Row. None had a stamp. Every one was written in the same slanting hand, and every one ended the same way.

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Mo read them at the back table of the café Eileen had run for forty years, between the lunch rush and the turn of the tide. The early letters were about weather and a boat called the Marigold, about a cough that would not shift and a dog that followed the writer home from the slipway. The later ones were shorter. Always remember I love you, Mary, they ended, and beneath the name someone had drawn a starfish, a clam shell, and three small dots that might have been bubbles or might have been rain.

The last letter was dated the week the Marigold went out past the Skerries and did not come back. Mo turned it over and found nothing on the reverse, no address, no reply pinned to it. Upstairs, on the windowsill where Eileen had kept her sea glass, a real starfish had gone pale and brittle, its arms curled in like a hand that had given up holding on. Mo had always thought the café was simply a café.

She took the letter to the window and read the closing line aloud to the empty room, the way Eileen must have read it a thousand times. Then she set the dried starfish on the envelope, laid the shell beside it, and left the tin open on the sill, where the evening light could find it.