Black script lettering arranged in a cross shape on the side of a ribcage, with the reference John 3:16 written beneath it.

Scripture cross tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of black cursive script arranged into a cross shape across the side of a torso, partly covered by a dark lace garment at the top. The lettering is fine and fluid, with varied line weights, and the reference John 3:16 sits in smaller script below the main design. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and a blurred red and green background fills the left edge of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Cross Script Lettering Bible verse Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The nets came in heavy that October, and Ada Penrose sat on the quay wall with her needle and a hank of tarred twine, mending the holes the rocks had made. Her hands knew the work. Her eyes were on the boats coming round the point, counting them the way her mother had taught her: one, two, three, and then the gap where the Morwenna should have been.

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Nobody in Gullmouth had ever seen a net written on. Ada did it anyway, the winter after her husband's cutter went down off the Stones. She worked each knot with the fine blue thread her mother kept for darning christening shawls, tying words into the mesh in a slanted hand. One line ran across the head rope and another down the middle, so that when the net was shaken out on the slip the words made a cross, long at the foot and wide at the arms. The fishermen laughed. Old Harker said the fish could not read. Ada said the fish did not need to.

In February the Morwenna's net came up off the Stones, wound around a rock like a dropped skein. Ada laid it out on the slip as the tide drained away, and the men gathered with their caps in their hands. Nobody spoke. Blue letters curled over the wet grey cord in loops and tails, and at the foot, where the bag of the net gathered, were the words that had kept her awake since the funeral.

Harker lifted the corner, turned it to the light, and read the lines aloud, slowly, the way a man reads a name off a stone. Then he folded the net over his arm and carried it up the hill to the boat shed. They hung it on the back wall with the writing facing out, and every man who came in to mend his gear had to read it first.