Fine line black tattoo of a dandelion clock on the upper back, with its seeds drifting off and turning into small birds across the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds turning into birds on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black dandelion clock sits on the upper back and its seeds drift diagonally toward the shoulder, becoming small birds in flight. The linework is fine and delicate, with solid black ink for the seed head and the birds. The tattoo is shown in black ink against pale skin, with the composition running from lower left to upper right.

Fine line Botanical Back Dandelion Seed Bird Flight Wind

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The wind came round off the moor on Tuesday while I was pegging out the sheets, and the whole back field went to fluff. You'd have counted them. I stood with a peg in my mouth and watched the clocks lift off the verge by the stile, and then the pale seeds turned over in the air and came apart into birds, or something near enough. Mother says they were starlings. She has never been wrong about a bird in her life, only about people.

Mr Hobday brought the post up on Wednesday with his cap pushed back, which he only does when he has news he doesn't want to be the one to carry. The telegram was for the Carrs. Walter's coming home from Cyprus on the Thursday train, four years older and, so his mother says, quiet as a closed gate. Nobody in Thornby has said his name out loud since the spring, and now everybody is saying it at once.

So I walked down to the level crossing after tea with my good shoes in my hand, because the lane is all mud past the mill. The train was late. The gate stood open and the light went long and yellow over the rails, and the last of the dandelion heads along the cutting let go one by one. I thought of you counting wishes behind Pryce's garage, and I didn't wish anything, I just watched.

When the engine finally came round the bend a single swift, or starling, settled on the gatepost beside me and didn't fly off. I put my hand flat on the cold wood and waited for him to step down from the carriage.