Colourful flowing ribbons rise from black outlined upright pianos with scattered sheet music, a tattoo on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Coloured ribbons rising from pianos on ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo on the side of the ribs shows two black outlined upright pianos at the base, with loose sheets of music scattered around them. Multicoloured ribbon-like swirls in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and pink rise up the torso and wrap around a thin vertical pencil or stick at the top. The composition is tall and narrow, with the colour lines thinning and fading out as they reach the top of the design.

Ribs Ribbon Sheet music Music note Pencil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The second piano arrived at Hollin Street Methodist Hall twenty minutes before the bride, which was one more thing nobody had planned. Dad and I wheeled the pair of uprights off the lorry on a sack truck, and the removal man swore at the steps while I gathered the sheet music that kept sliding off the lids. Mrs Adeyemi had asked for Chopin for the walk in and anything with a waltz for the meal, and I had no idea which instrument would hold a tune after the damp.

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Ruth came in at half two with her ribbons still wound round the bouquet, the streamers her sister had tied on for luck. She stood between the pianos while I tuned the first one, and when I struck the A she laughed and said it sounded like a kettle thinking about it. A loop of pink satin snagged on the open lid, and I found myself threading it through the strings the way you'd feed a lace through a shoe.

By the time the first waltz started the hall had turned into a rainbow. Guests picked up strands and wound them round chair legs, coat hooks and the pencil my nephew had tucked behind his ear to take song requests. Ribbons ran up the wall and out through the open window towards the car park, and nobody wanted to be the one to cut them.

When the couple finally left, sheets of music lay across the floor like fallen leaves and the ribbons hung loose from every hook. I rolled up the last of the pink and slipped it into my pocket. Ruth's grandmother had played that second piano for forty years, and I hadn't told anyone it was still sound. Some things you leave in tune and walk away from.