Fine line black tattoo of birds flying from a dandelion seed head across the upper back and shoulder, shown from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birds and dandelion seeds across a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's upper back and shoulder, viewed from behind with her head turned away. A line of small black birds in flight drifts from the nape of the neck towards the shoulder, ending in a dandelion seed head with loose seeds scattered along the path. The linework is fine and the shading is soft grey, set against warm skin and a blurred green background.

Fine line Botanical Shoulder Back Bird Dandelion Seed Flight Neck Shoulder

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, The geese went over on Tuesday, a long ragged line stitched across the grey sky above the top field, and I stood in the yard with the milk pail until my hands went numb. Father says the frost will hold till March, and the lower pond has a skin of ice you could walk on if you were foolish enough to try. I was foolish enough to think of you and not much else.

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I found the tin in the dresser this morning, the one with the broken lid where you kept your bits. Inside was the dandelion clock you picked for me the week before you left, the one I said was too pretty to blow. It has gone brittle and grey, half the seeds already gone. I took it out to the back step and held it up, and the wind came round the barn and took two more before I could stop it. I had been saving a wish for you, but I said it too late, so I'm sending it in this letter instead, folded small.

The last seed caught on the sill of the back window, pale and whole, with its little parachute still tight. I didn't blow it off. I opened the sash instead, and the cold came in smelling of straw and rain, and I let it go. It rose over the hedge and went after the geese, the way things do when they have somewhere better to be.

Your sister, Ada

P.S. Mother has begun knitting you a scarf, which she says is for when you come home. I have told her it will not fit a man who has been away this long, and she has told me to mind my own business.