Black linework tattoo of a bird skull framed by flowers and feathers with green wash accents, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird skull with flowers on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A bird skull in profile sits at the centre of the design, surrounded by line-drawn flowers, a chrysanthemum-like bloom, leaves and feathers. The linework is dark and sketchy with stippled shading on the skull, and loose teal-green wash accents sit behind and beside the motif. The image is a close, angled view of the forearm on a white towel.

Botanical Forearm Skull Flower Feather Leaves Chrysanthemum Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the skull in the bottom of your aunt Joan's biscuit tin on the morning of the wedding, wrapped in a handkerchief that smells of camphor. She says it is a heron's, picked off the mudflats below Saltmere, and that it must go in the bride's bouquet or the marriage will turn sour like milk left in August. You have never believed in souring milk, but you have always believed in Joan, so at half past nine you are standing in the church vestry with a bird's head in your palms and a hot glue gun that belongs to the verger.

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Hetty, the bride, wants her chrysanthemums white and plain. You tuck the skull among them and bind its jaw shut with florist's wire so it looks as though it is listening. The teal ribbon left over from the reception tables goes round the stems, because it is the only green anyone in the family agreed on. Her brother laughs and asks whether it is a funeral. You tell him it is an inheritance, and he lets it go.

During the vows the organ wheezes on a low note, and beyond the churchyard wall a real heron lifts off the reeds with a sound like a torn sheet. The skull in the bouquet seems to tilt towards the open door. Hetty squeezes your hand and hands the flowers back to you at the lychgate, grinning, saying you can keep whatever luck is left in them.

At the reception you find the skull on the windowsill, feathers from the bouquet scattered across the tablecloths like a late frost, and the last of the light turning the ribbon the colour of deep water.