Fine line black script tattoo on the ribs reading Be still and know that I am God, with Psalm 46:10 NKJV beneath it.

Scripture quote in script on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a handwritten-style script tattoo running diagonally across the side of the ribcage. The text reads Be still and know that I am God, with the reference Psalm 46:10 NKJV in smaller letters beneath the end of the line. The linework is thin and uniform in black ink, set against pale skin and a red garment at the upper left.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Scripture Bible verse Handwriting Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shift over, you're dripping on the ledger. Aye, it's been raining since Tuesday, and the stalls on Cutler Lane have all gone to sulking under their tarpaulins. My grandfather sat at this same trestle for forty-one years writing letters for people who could not write them, and the rain never once stopped him. He said the trick was to stay still in the middle of the noise, the way a heron stands still in a flooded ditch.

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One wet Thursday a fishmonger's widow came with a stub of pencil and a crumpled sheet. She wanted a letter to her son in Leeds, who had not answered in three winters, and she could not say what she wanted to say. She sat with her hands in her lap, dripping onto the boards, and my grandfather waited. He did not write a word for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then he dipped his pen and wrote, in a slow hand that leaned into the wind: Come home when you can. The fish will keep. The kettle is on.

The widow read it twice and asked him to take out the kettle, because it sounded foolish. He left it in. She paid him a penny and walked off into the rain without her umbrella, and he said afterwards she walked like a woman who had finally put something down.

Years later the son came down Cutler Lane himself, soaked to the skin, and asked for the scribe. My grandfather was gone by then. The son stood at the empty trestle reading the old card pinned above it, Be still and know, and the rain stopped right there over his head. I have never decided whether that was a story or the truth, which is how I know it was the truth.