Three-panel photo of a traditional style tattoo on a forearm, showing a black crow perched among red roses and green leaves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crow and roses on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Three views of a forearm tattoo show a large black crow perched above two red roses with green leaves. The crow is rendered with bold black outlines and smooth black shading, with dark scale-like texture on its chest. The roses and leaves are in solid red and green, and the wrist and hand are visible in the lower part of each frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the crow came back to the yard this morning, the big black one with the grey-tipped wing that sits on the gatepost like it pays rent. Your father would have called it a thief and thrown a clod at it, but I've started leaving it the crusts from the loaf, since it seems to have taken over the job of watching the lane while you're gone.

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The roses along the wall have gone mad this year. Your gran's Dutch reds, the ones she swore would die in the wet, are standing up to my elbows, and every bloom has a gap in its petals where something has pecked. I found the crow with its beak full of red on Tuesday, holding a petal like a man holding a letter he means to read in private. I laughed so hard I had to sit on the step.

The vicar's boy says a crow in the garden means a death in the family, and I told him that was rubbish, the only death coming is the one the wet will bring to the bulbs if nobody lifts them. Still, I looked up when the bird went over the chapel roof and I thought of you on the Ardent, somewhere past the Azores, and I didn't say a prayer. I just said your name to the gatepost.

Come home before the roses finish. The crow can have the petals, but I want you on that step, grinning at the mess.

Mum

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