Black and grey realism style tattoo of a parchment scroll carrying a handwritten script quote, placed on the side of the ribs.

Scroll with script quote on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A parchment scroll with curled ends fills the side of the ribs, carrying a block of cursive script in black ink. The scroll uses soft grey shading and rolled edges to suggest depth and texture, while the lettering has clean, even linework. The design is shown in black and grey against warm skin tones, with the text running top to bottom across the centre of the image.

Lettering Realism Ribs Scroll Script Quote Handwriting

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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

Mr Halloran's hand shook too badly to hold a pen steady that autumn, so I did the copying. Every Thursday he sat at the potting bench behind number nine, Ashgrove Road, and dictated the lines onto good parchment paper while I wrote them out in the careful italic my mother had taught me. I was twelve. He said a boy's hand was steadier than an old man's, which was not true, but I liked hearing it.

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We worked through the spring. The roses along the fence came out in the wrong order, and he grumbled about greenfly while I ruled faint guidelines in pencil. I spoiled several sheets and had to begin again, and he never once made me feel slow. When I asked why he wanted the words on a scroll rather than a card, he said cards get thrown away but scrolls get rolled up and kept in drawers, and that was a better life for something you meant.

In June his daughter came to the gate with her car keys in her fist and asked for the sheet. Her father had wanted the last lines read aloud, she said, and she could not bring herself to read them. So I read them to her there on the path, between the lavender and the water butt. Strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way. My voice wobbled on the word light, and she nodded as if that was the right place for it to wobble.

She rolled the parchment tight, tied it with green garden twine, and pressed a folded pound coin into my palm for my trouble. I still have the coin. I have never spent it. The scroll lives in a drawer in her kitchen, she told me later, and she unrolls it once a year on his birthday, when the roses are out.