Solid black tattoo of a cross with three birds flying upwards above it, placed on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Cross and three birds on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black Latin-style cross sits on the upper back, with three simple black bird silhouettes rising above and to the right of its crossbar. The lines are bold and uniform with flat, solid fill and no shading or gradient. The skin is light, the hair falls across the neck, and a grey top sits at the shoulder.

Back Cross Bird Flight

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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

Dear Tom, the ovens were already warm when I came in this morning, and Mrs Okafor's flour sacks were stacked by the back door the way you always left them, crooked. I didn't straighten them. I thought you'd want to see that somebody else had finally learned to leave things alone.

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The shop is quieter without you, though the regulars keep asking after you as if you've only popped out for paper. Dev still wants his split tin at half five, and the vicar's wife still buys six currant buns on Thursdays and tells me the Lord has a plan for everyone. I've started nodding instead of arguing. It's easier than explaining that I don't know what the plan is, only that the light comes up grey over the car park at quarter past six, and for ten minutes the swifts go round the church spire as if they've been let out of something.

You'll laugh, but I counted them last week. Three birds, always three, climbing off the steeple together and then splitting apart over the bins. Dad would have called it a sign. You'd have said it was just birds with somewhere to be. I stood there with a tray of cooling loaves and watched until the sun cleared the rooftops and they were only specks.

I kept the old cross from the chapel door, the one that came down in the storm. I've been meaning to hang it over the proving cupboard. Maybe I'll do it this morning, before the first van. If you come home for Easter, you can tell me I've put it up crooked.