Black ink tattoo of a bare tree with branches over the shoulder and upper arm, with three birds in flight across the upper back, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree and birds on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tree with bare, spreading branches covers the shoulder and upper arm, with its trunk curving down the arm. Three small silhouetted birds in flight sit across the shoulder blade and upper back. The tattoo is solid black with fine branch detail, set against pale skin, a white top and a soft, blurred outdoor background.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Back Tree Branches Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The big top came down on Tuesday, in the rain, the way I always said it would, and nobody cheered. Dodger has the last of the lorries loaded and is sulking over the Shetland pony that won't go up the ramp. I told him to leave the pony and take the tent poles, but he says the pony is the only thing in the company that still leans to the left when it stands, and that's worth more than the poles. I haven't the heart to argue with him.

The elm is still standing at the end of the winter field. You'll remember it, the one we climbed the summer you were nine and swore you'd run away with the flyers. It's stripped now, every leaf gone since October, and the rooks have deserted it for the wood across the lane. What's left is the bare crown reaching over the hedge like it's trying to catch something. Yesterday, when the lorries pulled out, a flock of starlings came up off the road in one loud breath and settled in the branches, black against the grey, as if somebody had dropped a handful of ash into the wood.

I have kept the bills. The one from Carlisle, the one from the Leeds fair with your name still on the fourth line in pencil. I'm sending them to you in a tin. You always said I'd never let anything go, and you were right, so here is me finally letting something go, though not the tin.

Come and see the elm before the spring. Bring the tin back if you want it. Bring nothing if you don't.

Dad