Black and grey realistic tattoo of a weathered wooden cross with a ribbon banner reading To Live Is Christ in script, on the upper arm.

Wooden cross with To Live Is Christ banner

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A weathered wooden cross is wrapped by a ribbon banner that carries the script words To Live Is Christ across its centre. The wood grain, knots and cracks are shaded in smooth gradients, with the ribbon folds and lettering outlined in sharp black lines. The piece is shown in greys on skin, with the design filling the frame.

Realism Lettering Traditional Upper arm Cross Wood Banner Ribbon Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rails came off the old orchard fence in February, when Albert Dunn's knees gave out and his son finally came with the van. Maud watched from the kitchen window as they stacked the grey timber by the compost heap, split and silvered, knotted where the nails had rusted through. She had been meaning to burn them for years.

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It was Maud who found the cross in them. Two uprights and one crossbar, and the wood kept its own weather: cracks running down the grain like the lines on the back of her hand. She sanded it through a wet week, oiled the knots until they glowed, then cut a strip of planed oak for the ribbon and carved the words with the penknife Albert had carried to every harvest supper. Her letters wandered uphill. She kept them anyway.

When the cross was finished she carried it down the garden path to the far bed, where the runner beans were climbing a frame of hazel. She pushed it into the soft earth beside the rhubarb, banner facing the lane, and stood back with her hands on her hips. The morning sun caught the carved words and threw the shadow of the ribbon across the path.

Her neighbour leaned over the hedge and asked what it was for. Maud pulled a bean pod from the frame, snapped it, and considered. "It's a marker," she said. "Of where I've got to." Then she went back to the beans, which needed picking before the rain.