Colour realism tattoo of a feather shading from green to pink that breaks into small birds, with the word Grandma in script below, on the upper chest.

Feather dissolving into birds with script

Realism · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A feather runs diagonally across the upper chest, shaded in greens, pinks and teal with fine highlights along the central shaft. Its edge breaks up into a scatter of small birds in red, green and teal that drift up and to the right. The word Grandma is written in black cursive script beneath the feather's base.

Realism Lettering Chest Feather Bird Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The starlings came down over Coldharbour Lock the morning Gran's last feather floated past the bow, and I remember thinking she would have made a joke about it. She had a joke for everything, usually at the expense of whoever was steering. Today it was me, sixteen and hopeless with a windlass, and she sat on the cabin step with her hands folded over a tin mug, watching the water like it owed her money.

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The feather was a grey-green flight feather from a jay she'd found on the towpath in April. She kept it in the lid of the biscuit tin, under the cough sweets, and whenever we moved the boat she'd take it out and press it to her lips as if testing a coin. 'Birds don't leave, they just change their minds about being heavy,' she told me once. I didn't understand until the day the lock keeper's wife rang to say she'd gone quietly in her chair.

We scattered her off the stern at dusk, just past the bridge where the water runs fast. I had the tin, but the wind kept turning the feather back toward the cabin roof, so I pulled it apart between my fingers and let it go a strand at a time. Some pieces caught the low light and turned into swifts, then into gulls, then into nothing I could name. By the time the barge was rocking in our wake, the river held only bright bits scattering off the rushes.

I still have the empty tin, and the lid still smells of cloves and tar. Afterwards I painted her name on the cabin door in the loopy hand she used for birthday cards, and I've never once got the G right.