Black tattoo of a cross and a flock of birds rising from the shoulder, with lettering along the upper back, in a lettering style.

Cross and birds with script on upper back

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's upper back shows a black tattoo of a Latin cross with a flock of birds in flight rising diagonally from the shoulder towards the neck. A line of script runs along the shoulder blade beneath the birds, and the lettering is partly legible. The ink is solid black with clean edges, and the photo is taken from behind in an indoor studio.

Lettering Shoulder Back Cross Bird Flock Script Quote

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the windfalls. No, Tom, that one's wasp-bitten, leave it. You want the story of the rooks at Cold Harbour? Then you'll hear it the way my gran told it, sat on this same wall with her apron full of Bramleys.

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There was a Mrs Ellery who kept the top orchard above the chapel, where the trees lean towards the hill as if they're trying to reach the church. Her husband had gone up the slate quarry road one October and not come down, and every evening after she'd picked the last basket she walked up to the stone cross on the ridge. She never prayed out loud. She counted birds. Eleven rooks lifted off the elms each dusk, wheeled once over the cross, and headed east over the Ashby fields.

One evening in late August a quarry lad came up the hill with a scrap of paper, out of breath, his boots in ribbons. Mrs Ellery didn't turn round. Does it say he's alive? she asked. The boy read it off the paper: The path is steep, but the view from the top is great. She laughed so hard she had to sit down in the long grass.

She never learned whether the quarry men had written that or the lad had made it up on the climb. My gran always said it made no difference. Whatever's written on a scrap of paper, you still have to choose to walk up. So when the rooks went over that night, Mrs Ellery stood, shouldered her basket, and followed them.