Black and grey fine line script lettering on the side of a body in a dark, low-key photograph, placed on the ribs area.

Small script word on side of body

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, single-word script tattoo in thin black linework sits on the side of a torso against a dark background. The lettering is slim and cursive with even line weight and minimal shading. The skin is shown in soft greyscale with the body curving out of shadow, and the tattoo sits low on the frame.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Word 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 card that came down from room four had one word on it, written in pencil in a hand so slanted and thin I had to hold it to the lamp. Mrs Pryce said the lodger had asked for paper and nothing else, and that he had paid a week ahead in coins he counted out on the counter as if he were sorting shells. I took the tray up because it was my turn, not because I wanted to know what he had written.

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The room smelled of brine and cold ash. He had gone out before dawn with his case, and the bed was made so tightly I doubted he had slept in it. Only the window ledge showed he had been there at all: the same slim looping letters, scratched with the point of a hatpin into the paint, the way a child signs a desk. I ran my thumb over them. The word meant nothing I could name, but it had a shape, a rise and fall like a line of hills seen from a boat.

Down on the front the tide was going out over the sand, leaving a skin of water that held the sky. I walked to the steps where the lodgers liked to stand and watched the gulls work the wrack. I thought of the card in my apron pocket and the ledge upstairs, and how a word can sit low on a person, unseen, until the light falls across it just so.

I did not keep the card. I took it out to the sea wall and let the wind have it, and by the time the water reached the bottom step the pencil had gone grey and then nothing at all, and the sand was smooth as though no one had ever stood there writing.