Black and white photo of a fine line script tattoo reading Viajar es vivir dos veces on the side of the ribs.

Spanish script quote on the side body

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black script reads Viajar es vivir dos veces, a Spanish phrase, across the skin of the side body. The linework is thin and even, with the letters flowing left to right and slight shading in the strokes. The black and white photograph is cropped tightly to the tattoo and the curve of the skin beneath it.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Quote Script Text Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had got into the lower field again by the time the post van rattled up the lane, and Dad said nothing while I signed for the envelope. He just looked at the stamp as if it had insulted him. Inside was a postcard of a harbour with yellow houses stacked up a hill, and on the back, in Tomás's cramped capitals, a sentence he must have copied off a bar wall: VIAJAR ES VIVIR DOS VECES. Underneath he had written, in English, Don't let Dad read this bit.

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I read it aloud at the kitchen table anyway, in the careful voice Mum used for the Spanish cookbook, while Dad scraped mud from his boots onto the newspaper. To travel is to live twice. He said that was the sort of thing people painted on mugs at Christmas fairs. Then he got up, lifted the calendar off its nail and turned to December, where the lambing dates were pencilled in a column, ewe numbers beside them, the handwriting going shakier every year.

He was quiet for a long time. The stove ticked. Outside, the yard light buzzed and a few flakes came down past the window, not settling yet. When he finally spoke it was about the top field, whether the gate hinge would hold through another week of this, and I understood that was his answer, or the nearest he would come to one.

Before I went up to bed he had pinned the postcard to the calendar, right over the first week of March, where the ewes would be heavy and the nights would still be cold. I left it there. Some things in this house get a place on the wall before anyone agrees to them.