Black botanical tattoo of a bare tree with birds lifting off its branches, placed centrally on the upper back of a woman with her hair in a bun.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree with birds on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a woman seen from behind, with her hair tied in a loose bun and a strapless patterned top. A black tattoo of a bare tree with thin branches and roots sits between the shoulder blades, with several small birds or leaves drifting away to the right. The ink is solid black with fine branch detail, set against warm skin and a soft green blurred background.

Botanical Back Tree Bare tree Bird Leaves Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The old ash below Hobb's Lock has finally gone bare, and I thought you would want to know, since you were the one who said it would never give up. Dad's barge is tied up beside it again tonight, the Marigold with her green paint blistering at the stern, and I have been sitting on the roof watching the rooks lift off the top branches one by one as the light goes. They don't go all at once. They drift, a few at a time, out over the water toward the reeds on the far bank, as if they have agreed among themselves who leaves first.

Mrs Pardoe from the lock cottage came down with a jar of plum jam this morning and said the tree was dying from the roots up, that the flood in March had got under it. I told her it looked more like it was just getting ready for winter, and she gave me the look she gives the lock gates when they stick. She is probably right. Everything on this river is either rotting or being dredged, and the water goes on regardless.

I've been thinking about what you said before you left, that a person on a boat is always going somewhere and so never really belongs anywhere. The ash has stood in one place for ninety years and it looks no happier for it. Its roots go down into the clay and stay put, and its branches keep reaching out over the towpath as though somebody might come along and need them.

Dad says we'll move on Thursday if the wind holds. I'll write from Thrupp.

Your sister, Nell