Neo-traditional tattoo on a thigh showing a shaded black and grey bird beside red poppies, green leaves and white scrollwork.

Bird and red poppies on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo on the outer thigh of a person lying on white bedding, wearing maroon underwear. A shaded black and grey bird with detailed feathers sits beside large red poppies with green leaves and white filigree scrollwork. Bold black outlines and smooth colour fills give a bright contrast against the skin.

Neo-trad Traditional Thigh Bird Poppy Flower Leaves Scrollwork Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewe had been down in the far field since before the frost lifted, and Nell Harker had walked the wall twice with the lantern before she noticed the bird on the gatepost. It was a swallow, though wrong for the season, its black wings folded tight as a shut book. The feathers were grey at the edges where the lamplight caught them, as if someone had shaded each one with a dry brush.

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"You're no good to me," she told it, and it lifted and dropped ahead of her along the hedge line, settling each time she fell behind. Snow had started to sift over the stubble. She followed it past the drained pond and the broken hurdle her father never mended, to a hollow under the blackthorn where the ewe lay with her legs folded wrong and her breath steaming.

Lambing came slow after that. Nell worked with her sleeves rolled and her fingers numb, and when the lamb finally slid out, grey and slick, the bird was sitting on the blackthorn with its head tilted as if it had counted every minute. She was too tired to thank it. Only later did she notice the seed packet in her coat pocket, the one her mother had kept for the summer border, split now and dusted red across the lining.

Back in the kitchen she set the lamb by the range. The bird was gone, leaving one small feather on the sill. She pressed it between the pages of the seed catalogue, beside a row of paper poppies she had folded the winter her mother died. In March, she decided, she would sow the whole border again, whatever the weather did.