Close photo of fine line black script reading 'el exito es la mejor venganza' across the skin of the hip, below a dark garment.

Spanish script quote on the hip

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a single line of cursive script tattooed horizontally across the skin, set just below the edge of a dark garment. The thin, even linework is in black or dark grey ink with little shading, and the lettering reads 'el exito es la mejor venganza'. The warm, slightly soft phone photo is cropped tightly on the tattoo, with a pale door frame and a small jar visible at the right edge.

Fine line Lettering Other Script Quote Lettering Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your letter came up on the supply boat with the paraffin and the bad coffee, and I read it twice on the stairs before I let myself laugh. You wrote that a woman who counts gulls for a living should not expect much from life, and that the rock would swallow me the way it swallowed my father.

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Well, the rock has not swallowed me. Last month the inspector from the lighthouse board climbed all three hundred and twelve steps, ran a white glove over the lens, and asked who had kept it so clean. I told him it was the keeper. He wrote my name in his book beside a figure that had doubled since the year before. Señora Ibarra, who sold you sardines you never paid for, has sent word that she is ashamed of her mouth.

I am not writing to crow. I am writing because Grandmother used to say el éxito es la mejor venganza over the soup, and I thought it was a cruel thing for an old woman to say to a child. Now I understand she meant it as a plain instruction. Do not waste your breath on the people who doubt you. Polish the glass.

Tonight the beam goes round at eleven, and I will be up at the lamp with the brass cloth you once called a rag. When the light swings across your side of the water, you will see it is steady. Come and look at it sometime, Rafael. Bring your own rag.