Black ink tattoo of two silhouetted birds on a branch with a small heart knot and a script quote above, placed on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Birds on a branch with quote across the upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two solid black silhouetted birds perched on a bare branch, with a heart shape in the knot of the branch on the left. A thin cursive script line above reads "But in my heart is a memory, and there you'll always be." The ink is black, with the script in fine, even linework and the birds and branch in solid fill, set against pale skin on the upper back.

Lettering Back Bird Branch Heart Script Quote Silhouette

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hawthorn at the top of Breakwater Lane had leaned over the slipway since before my mother was born, and every spring two wood pigeons came back to the same fork in it. Ada Penhallow swore they were the same pair. She said pigeons mate for life, which I told her was a fine thing for pigeons to manage, given how much I'd seen of people managing it.

Keep reading

The winter Dad's boat went out without him, the whole harbour came up the lane with pies and bad advice. Nobody thought to ask about the hawthorn. I went up there alone one February with a bow saw, meaning to take down the dead wood before the next gale did it for me. I'd cut two limbs before I noticed the knot on the lower branch, a little heart grown into the bark, perfectly formed, as if someone had pressed it there with a thumb while the wood was still soft.

I didn't cut the rest. I sat on the wall with my boots dangling over the drop and watched the tide drag the bottom out of the harbour, thinking about the lines people cut into stones and then trust the weather to wear down. Ada came up at dusk with a flask and found me still there. She looked at the branch, then at me, and said nothing clever, which is why I loved her.

In April the pigeons came back to the fork. There were two of them, sitting close, one leaning its head against the other's neck as if nothing had ever gone out without them. I left the saw in the shed and carried the flask home.