Rib Cage Tattoo Quotes

He trains hard, I can tell. That is not a body that you get from just diet and good genes. That’s a body you lift heavy iron for. Dark sweatpants hang off his slim waist, a perfectly dipped V dancing down his pelvis. There’s a tattoo going over that area too though, in big Old English font. My eyes dart to his left rib cage where a paragraph is inked in cursive. He also has two full sleeves of tattoos—no color, just grey and white—and what looks

I turned my wrist over and smiled at my very own butterfly imbedded artfully and permanently into my skin. It was simple…just a black outline...a cookie cutter tattoo.  At least that was what Max had called it. Gently I traced the outline and remembered the day I got it. I was just eighteen, and scared to death, but I wanted it so badly. To make me feel better, Max decided to get one as well. It would be his sixth tattoo…not his first time under the ink gun. He was a pro in my eyes and so having him there helped. He teased me about my choice saying I was too girly, but when the work was done, he had looked at me with admiration. “It suits you,” he had whispered. “It’s pretty and uncomplicated…just like you.” He’d leaned in and kissed me gently. I can still feel the scrape of his stubble and the warmth of his lips. The hazel eyes were earnest, as he pulled away. “What did you get?” I had asked, still overwhelmed by him. That crooked grin set the butterflies to flight in my stomach. He’d chuckled and went for the hem of his shirt, lifting it up on the left side. I’d seen the beautiful angel he had gone back time and time again to be finished. It was a twist of wings and shadows and it raveled down the entire rib cage ending just at his hip. It was a masterpiece.  I had admired it for an instant before I noticed the change. I had covered my mouth and gasped in surprise. Woven into one of the angel’s wings was my name.

I tried to stop my imagination at that point, but by then the image was more powerful than I was. I kept looking, I couldn’t take my eyes off it, the way you’ll watch open-heart surgery or an eye operation on TV, even though you know you shouldn’t, the remote in your hand, your thumb on the button, ready to zap away, but you wait too long: the shot of the sawed-open rib cage, the surgeon’s hands in their green plastic gloves holding the throbbing heart, the white eyeball hanging out of its socket, attached to the head by only a few bloody threads, will remain tattooed on your retinas for the rest of your life.

Volsung straddles his daughter, putting his weight on her tailbone, and sets to grim work. With the knife from his waist, he cuts open her vest to reveal Sefi’s tattooed back. In a tender sawing motion, he carves off two long flaps of flesh from the shoulder blades to the tailbone, exposing her rib cage. She flails like a punctured fish. Then with a small axe from his hip, Volsung hacks at the ribs on either side of her spine. She jerks in agony, but no sound escapes her. He discards the hatchet and pries open her rib cage from behind to expose her lungs. Tears leak from her eyes. She gasps for air. As peaceful as a man cleaning a fish, Volsung takes a handful of salt from a pouch and throws it on the wounds.