Black and grey shaded tattoo of a bird with wings made of musical notes and a treble clef, on the side of the torso above jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird made of musical notes on the side

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small bird in flight is formed from musical notes, with a treble clef at its body and notes trailing from its wings and tail. The linework is combined with soft grey shading that gives the wings and tail depth against the skin. The tattoo is shown in close crop on the side of the torso, with blue denim at the bottom edge of the frame.

Other Bird Musical note Treble clef Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The choir hall smells of wet wool and coal dust, and Mr Pritchard raps his baton twice on the piano lid before anyone opens their mouth. You stand at the back between Dai the shot-firer and the Lewis twins, where the tenors have always been put, nearest the door in case the sopranos wander off key. Tonight the score on your stand is smudged with pencil, and at the top someone has drawn a treble clef in your father's careful hand.

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Your father worked the face at Glynfach for thirty-one years and never once learned to read a note. He hummed in the bath, whistled on the cage, and sang the descant in chapel with his eyes shut. The winter the lower seam fell in, it was the men who kept singing in the dark, passing the time until the rescue crew's picks reached them, and he always said the tune had kept more of them breathing than the fan ever did.

You fold the score into your breast pocket and walk home down the hill with the chapel windows lit gold behind you. At the stile a small brown bird lifts off the wall, its wings ragged with loose notes that seem to stream from its feathers like wool off a spindle. Somewhere below, a tenor line climbs up through the valley air, and the bird banks into it as though it has been waiting all evening for the cue.

On Sunday you stand in your father's place and sing the solo he always hummed. For once the back row does not drown you out, and when the last note hangs in the rafters, Dai the shot-firer clears his throat and says, quite plainly, that it was a good one, Dad.