Colour tattoo on a person's upper back and shoulder blade showing a Roman numeral clock face with autumn maple leaves and black crows in a watercolour style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Clock, maple leaves and crows on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

A clock face with Roman numerals and black hands sits at the centre of the design, partly wrapped by orange, red and yellow maple leaves. Three black crows fly across the upper right, with dark ink splashes and red and orange spatter scattered around the leaves. The linework is bold and the leaves are shaded with soft washes, giving a loose watercolour effect across the upper back.

Back Shoulder Clock Roman numeral Maple leaves Crow Bird Watercolour splash Autumn

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walter,

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The clock on the Corn Exchange has stopped again, and this time I think the crows are to blame. Mr Pryce says they've been roosting in the gap behind the face since the first frost, and the maple outside the bank has dropped so many leaves that the square looks like someone spilled a paint tin. Nobody has been up the ladder since Dad died, so the hands have stayed at twenty past four all month, the hour you bought your ticket.

I went up on Saturday with Mrs Okonedo's boy holding the ladder, which I will not be telling Mother. The stairs smelled of pigeon and wet wood. Inside the case the mechanism was furred with dust, and three crows lifted off the rafters all at once, black as burnt paper, and went out through the louvres in a rush that nearly knocked me off the boards. Leaves came in after them, red and gold, and settled on the works as if they had been waiting.

I cleared the nest, oiled what I could find with Dad's old oil can, and then I stood a long while with my hand on the minute hand. I thought I would feel him telling me to leave it. I didn't. I moved it forward, slowly, past four, past the dinner bell, past the hour the last train went through, until it showed a time that belongs only to Tuesday.

Walter, it is ten past eleven now and the whole square is loud with leaves going round. Come home for Christmas if the railway lets you. The clock keeps time again, and I have stopped waiting for it to tell me something different.

Love, Ada