Black and grey angel wings framing the word Hope in script across the top of a foot, with a small heart in the lettering.

Angel wings and Hope script on foot

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of shaded angel wings spreads across the top of a foot, with the word Hope written in flowing script between them. A small heart sits within the lettering, and faint swirling flourishes trail from the wings. The image is in black and grey, with soft grey shading on the feathers and bold, smooth linework on the script.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top has three poles left standing and a patch of blue tarpaulin on the north side where the canvas gave up in Hull. Mr Abney tells the crowd the flying act is the finale, the way he has told them every season since the lions were sold. You are the flyer now. Dmitri's knees went in March, and the act is the act, so you climb the ladder in his old leather harness, which still smells of liniment.

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Each night the drum starts with Stanley thumping it with his heel, and you chalk your palms and look up at the rigging. The ropes have gone grey where the damp got in. Your mother stitched a pair of sequinned wings onto a leotard the summer you were nine, and told you a wing is only a plan for falling slowly. The leotard lives in the trunk now, its tissue paper gone yellow, and the sequins catch the lamplight whenever you lift the lid to check for moths.

On the last night at Scarborough the net does not come down. Abney is still counting coins in the box office and nobody has told the crowd. You stand on the platform with the lamps swinging and the tent gone quiet as a chapel, and you understand they have come to watch you decide. In the back row a child sits on her father's shoulders, waving a paper fan printed with the word Abney chose for the posters, HOPE, in a looping gold hand.

You let go. Not for the crowd, and not for the gold letters, but because you have finally decided to finish the plan. The old wings flash once in the light, and for a second the whole tent holds its breath. Then the sawdust rises to meet you, and the child in the back row starts clapping before anyone else does.

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