Black script reading dream by day with a bird perched on a branch on the upper back, beside a Celtic knot tattoo on the upper arm.

Dream by day script and bird on shoulder

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a person's shoulder with the words dream by day written in flowing black script, with a solid black bird perched on a thin branch that curves up beside the final word. A dark Celtic knot tattoo sits at the lower right edge of the frame on the upper arm. The ink is black only, with a soft-focus background and shallow depth of field that keeps the neck and hair out of focus.

Lettering Fine line Back Upper arm Script Bird Branch Celtic knot Word

Find an artist for this

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,

Keep reading

The rook came back to the Sayers' orchard again this morning and settled on the bare plum branch as if someone had posted it there. I have stopped shooing it. Mrs Pell says it knows the way to the old pump, which is why it keeps coming, but I think it has simply noticed that nobody in this village looks up any more.

You will laugh, but I have done what you always said I wouldn't and gone to the reunion dinner at the Crown. Thirty-one years since Ashdown School and half the room still calls me Lizzie Dog. Dennis Hale brought photographs of the Scilly ferry and talked about nothing else. I sat by the window and read the menu twice, because the words printed on it were the only thing I could hold still.

Here is the part I meant to tell you. On the way home I found a bent tin on the verge with a strip of paper folded inside, the sort that used to come out of Christmas crackers. It said DREAM BY DAY in a hand so looped it might have been a child's or a grandmother's. I have pinned it above the kettle. I think it was meant for someone who had lost the night shift of their life and needed reminding that the daylight was still theirs.

I am not sure yet whether I believe that. But the rook is watching me write this, and I have decided to believe it for the length of one stamp.

Love, Jen