Black and grey serif lettering with small stars on the side of a torso, with a dark leafy tattoo partly visible at the top right.

Serif lettering with stars on side body

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Black serif capital lettering runs diagonally across smooth skin, with three small star shapes trailing below the final word. A dark tattoo of leaves or a branch is partly cropped at the top right of the frame. The greyscale photograph is taken indoors against a plain wall and a window, with soft even light across the skin.

Lettering Ribs Text Star Leaves Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mira Duffy had worked the Ardmore crossing for nineteen years, long enough to know that most people lied about what was in the boot, and very few lied about their hands. The man in the blue car kept his on the wheel at ten and two, as if someone might ask him to steer out of the lane. She took his passport, checked the photograph against the face, and asked where he was headed.

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"Home," he said. "Well, to my sister's. She's having the baby early."

The stamp hovered over the page. Mira had a rule about stories told at the window, which was to let them finish without help. He turned the passport over, and tucked inside the back cover was a folded sheet of tracing paper. She opened it on the counter. Someone had copied a line in careful capitals, the serifs sharp as pins, and beneath it three small stars drawn in pencil, trailing towards the corner like crumbs from a loaf.

UNTIL THE VERY END.

"My father wrote that," he said. "On the back of every postcard he sent when he worked the ferries. I always thought it was a joke about the ferries."

Mira stamped the page with the date and folded the tracing paper back along its creases, lining the stars up with the edge of the passport so they pointed at the lining rather than the light. "Give your sister my regards," she said, and watched the blue car roll under the barrier, its brake lights blinking once at the first bend.