Black and grey realism tattoo of a perched songbird, blossom branch and pocket watch with chain on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird, blossom and pocket watch on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo shows a songbird perched on a branch with small five-petal blossoms, beside an open pocket watch with ornate scrollwork and a chain ending in a clasp. The bird is shaded with soft gradients and fine feather detail, while the watch and flowers use bold outlines with lighter shading. The design sits on the outer thigh, photographed close up in black and white against a dark garment at the top of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your collars up and stop dripping on the cheese, the lot of you. The rain won't pass before I'm done, so you may as well stand under the awning by the eel stall and listen. You've heard of the bird that kept the market's time? No? Then hush, and mind the puddle by your left boot.

Keep reading

Mrs Okonkwo's grandmother, rest her, kept a pocket watch on a silver chain, and it stopped at a quarter past four the afternoon her son sailed from Harwick for the Baltic. Nobody could mend it. Then a small brown songbird came down from the cherry tree behind the fishmonger's and perched on that chain each morning, pecking at the clasp as if it owed the watch a debt. Some said it was after the crumbs from the cobbler's bench. Others said it was keeping time.

One morning in blossom season the bird sang, and the hands of the watch jumped forward, and the ticking started up again, bright as a tap. The stallholders set their stalls by it after that. The petals drifted over the cobbles, and a man in a wet wool coat came walking up the lane, reading the hour off the sky.

The watch still hangs on that branch, chain swinging, clasp open. Her son took the bird's song for a summons, and that is why he came home. Now mind the drip off the awning. Same time next week, if the rain allows.

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