Fine line black script tattoo reading Smile on the side of a ribcage, with several moles visible on the surrounding skin.

Smile script on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of the side of a torso, with a raised arm across the upper frame. The word Smile is written in a thin, cursive black script with a slightly looped S. The linework is even and fine, and the lettering is the only ink visible against the pale skin, with dark moles scattered nearby.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Smile Word Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother says I should write more often, so here is the first proper letter since the pier season opened, though I have nothing to report but Mr Gorringe's gout and three fingers in a splint from the coat-check door. Ivy, the ballroom is not what the handbills promised. The floor is sprung, true, but the mirror ball has one dead eye and the band is four men and a boy with a tuba who cannot find the beat.

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Last Saturday a sailor asked me to dance and I said no, because Mr Pritchard, who runs the floor, has a rule that the girls at the rail keep their faces pleasant until they are asked properly. He caught me scowling and wrote a word on my dance card in neat capitals, SMILE, then pinned the card to my blouse like a medal. I thought it an insult. I tore it in half on the stairs.

The next evening the sailor came back, found me at the rail, and handed me the pieces taped together with a strip of cloth. He had kept every scrap of it. He said he had never seen a girl look so cross at a waltz and he would like to be the one to change her mind. I have not decided whether he is a fool or the only honest man on the pier.

I am writing this on the back of the rota, so forgive the blots. Tell Father the upright at the Grand is his old one and I have kept it in tune. I'll come home at Michaelmas. If the sailor writes, I shall answer, and if you see me grinning in the next photograph, you will know the reason was not Mr Pritchard.