Black ink tattoo of a dandelion releasing seeds, three birds and the script words 'i carry your heart' across the upper back.

Dandelion, birds and script quote on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A dandelion clock sits on the left with its seeds drifting to the right, alongside three bird silhouettes and two lines of cursive script reading 'i carry your heart' and '(i carry it in my heart)'. The dandelion is shaded with fine dark strokes, while the birds are solid black and the lettering is fine line. The tattoo is in black ink only, set against bare skin and a blurred green background.

Botanical Lettering Fine line Back Dandelion Seed Bird Script Quote Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The seventh summer the king's clockmaker went blind, the people of Hollin Vale had to tell the hours by the dandelions on the hill. Old Marta Pell still walked up each morning with a stick and a cup of barley water, and she blew on the clocks one at a time, counting the seeds as they lifted away. Seven breaths meant seven o'clock. Nobody else in the valley could do it without coughing.

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Her son had gone over the mountains to the salt cities when he was nineteen, and he had not written since the spring of the frost. The swallows that nested under the mill roof knew his name, she said, because she had told them. Every morning she told the birds that he was well, that the bread was rising, that the goat had kidded twice. The birds carried the words to wherever they went.

On the day the first wind came from the west, three swallows landed on the stone wall and would not fly off. Marta sat down on the damp grass beside them and waited. The seeds of the great clock drifted past her face, and one settled on the back of her hand, pale and furred as a moth. She did not blow on it. She let it lie there while the sun crept along the valley, and when the bells in the town below began to ring noon, she heard boots on the track.

Her son came up the hill with a satchel and the salt dust still on his sleeves. He stopped at the edge of the clock and held out his hand, and his mother looked at it for a long time before she began to count the breaths.