Close-up photograph of the words Still I Rise in black script lettering tattooed on skin.

Still I Rise script tattoo on skin

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the words "Still I Rise" written in flowing cursive script across the skin, with the word "Still" and "Rise" in joined lettering and "I" separated between them. The linework is a single consistent weight in dark grey ink, with some soft blurring at the edges of the photo. The background is smooth, warm-toned skin with a faint crease running across the lower part of the frame.

Lettering Word Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the first one in the lane at half four, the shutter still rattling down behind you on the flats. Flour dust already coats the bench from yesterday, and the starter in its crock sighs up the side as if it has been waiting all night to be useful. Your aunt Mercy wrote the recipe on the back of a feed bill in 1987, and it has never been improved upon, only copied in pencil by people too proud to ask.

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The dough for the seeded loaves has been folded three times and sulks under its cloth. Nobody believes it will rise. The oven has been on since three and the windows are already sweating. Ruth from the chemist's comes in at ten to five every Tuesday for a bag of rolls and a bit of gossip, and she says the same thing each week: that the stuff in the crock is older than the shop. You tell her it is older than the both of you.

At twenty past five you lift the cloth, and the dough has climbed over the rim of the bowl, slow and not entirely sure of itself, pushing against the linen as if it has an argument to finish. You knock it back, shape it tight, slash the tops with the razor, and set them in the cold proof. Beyond the window the sky over the car park goes from ink to the colour of weak tea, and the first van idles at the kerb.

Ruth says the loaves look like they have been through something. You tell her they have, and came out the better for it. She laughs and takes two. When the last tray comes out at six, the crusts are splitting in the exact places you cut them, and you stand in the steam with flour on your forearms, counting them, all twelve, risen.