Black line drawing flash of a small bird perched on a branch in front of a circle, with a banner reading OH, HELLO across its chest.

Bird with banner reading Oh, Hello

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A simple black line drawing of a round-bodied bird perched on a leafy branch, set within a circular frame. A ribbon banner across the bird's chest reads OH, HELLO, and further branches with leaves curve out on both sides. The linework is even and bold with no shading, and the composition is centred on a white background.

Traditional Bird Banner Branch Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bird landed on the bonnet of my Cortina the same afternoon the tyre gave out, forty miles past the last working pump on the Sand Wells road. It was round as a teacup and perched on the wiper blade as if it had booked the spot. I told it the car was finished, the water was in the jerrycan, and nobody was coming before dark. It looked at me with one black eye and said nothing, which I took for agreement.

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Nobody else on that road ever stopped. Lorries went past with their horns going and their dust settling on the glass in a fine orange film that I kept wiping away with my sleeve. The bird stayed. By noon it had moved to the cracked side mirror, and by three it was on the spare wheel propped against a boulder, fluffing itself like a bank clerk on a Monday. I got tired of talking out loud, so I started writing in the margin of the road atlas: the things I had meant to say to my sister, the things I'd been saving for a better audience.

Just after six a pickup slowed beside me, and the driver leaned out with his elbow on the door. "You all right out here, love?" he called, the way people do when they are already reaching for the gearstick. The bird lifted off the wheel, circled once over the dust, and came down on the roof of his cab with a small, decided thump.

I looked at the driver, then at the bird, then back at him. "Oh, hello," I said, and for once I meant every word of it. He grinned, climbed down, and started on the jack.