Colour tattoo of an open birdcage with pink and blue flowers on the upper arm and shoulder, with a small swallow in flight above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birdcage and flowers on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows an open birdcage with a decorative top finial, surrounded by pink and blue blossoms and leaves. A small bird in flight sits to the right, near the shoulder. The linework is dark and fairly bold, with soft grey shading in the cage and flower petals and touches of colour in the blooms.

Traditional Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Birdcage Flower Blossom Bird Swallow Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming sideways off the market roofs since eight, and by eleven my buckets of blossom were the only bright thing on Gilder's Yard. Pink cherry in the left-hand bucket, forget-me-nots in the right, the leaves beaded and shining as if someone had varnished them. Across the cobbles, old Mr Tallis had sold nothing all morning but a wrapped umbrella to a woman who didn't want it.

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He called me over at half past eleven, the way he did when the rain got into his bones. "Take this," he said, and pushed a birdcage across my trestle. It was fine wire curled at the top into a little brass knob, and its door hung open on one hinge. "Bird's gone. Went the summer my wife died. I never could bring myself to sell it, and you can have it for a pound, because you're the only one still standing here."

I didn't want it, but I took it. I set it on an upturned crate and tucked stems into the base, blue flowers spilling over the bars until the cage looked like it was growing out of the wet. Then a swallow came in under the edge of the awning, wings folded tight, and landed on the brass knob as though it had been saving the spot. It looked at me, then at the flowers, then at Mr Tallis, and I swear it tilted its head at him.

It stayed only a minute. Then it dropped off the far side of the awning and went straight out over the roofs, where the grey was thinnest. Mr Tallis didn't watch it go. He was folding his empty stall and whistling something under his breath. I left the little door hanging open, the way he'd given it to me, and paid him his pound from the cash tin.