Black and grey tattoo of the words Carpe Diem beside a shaded feather that breaks into flying birds, on the outer thigh.

Carpe Diem script with feather and birds

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads Carpe Diem in flowing script, with a shaded feather on the left that gradually breaks apart into small flying birds. Smooth black linework outlines the lettering, while the feather uses soft grey shading for depth. The design is shown in a close, slightly angled view on the side of the thigh against a dark background.

Lettering Realism Thigh Carpe diem Feather Bird Flying bird Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tom, the lift has been out since Tuesday, so I have been doing the stairs twice a day like a woman in training for something. By the ninth floor I was cursing the man who keeps promising the engineers are coming. By the twelfth I had stopped cursing and started counting pigeons on the ledge, which is how I came to find the feather.

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It was lying on the walkway outside 14C, grey and striped and perfect, the kind of feather your grandad would have pocketed for a fishing fly. I took it home and put it in the tea caddy, because I did not want to be the sort of old woman who keeps things for no reason. Then your postcard from Whitby came, the one with the gulls on it, and I sat down at the table and thought about the seaside trip we kept meaning to take and never took.

This morning I took the feather back out and stood on the balcony holding it. A flock came over the car park, dozens of them, lifting off the roof of the Co-op like someone had thrown a handful of pepper into the sky. Some of them broke off from the rest and scattered in every direction, and I thought, well, Ada, you can keep it in a caddy or you can let it go.

So I let it go. It caught the wind over the bins and went up past the fourteenth floor, and I stood there until my knees complained. Come up in June. The lift will be fixed by then, I'm sure of it, and if it isn't we'll take the stairs together.

Love, Mum