Pencil-shaded realism sketch of a single feather in black and grey, with the words 'let it be...' written along its curve, shown as a tattoo design.

Feather drawing with 'let it be' script

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A feather runs diagonally across a plain white background, from a fine quill at the lower left to a curled tip at the upper right. The barbs are drawn with soft, layered pencil shading that gives the feather a fluffy, three-dimensional look. The words 'let it be...' sit in small script across the middle of the feather in dark grey.

Realism Feather Script Let it be Quill Pencil drawing

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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

The last train has gone and the platform lamps hum over an empty bench, and you are the one sweeping up. Someone has left a grey feather wedged under the timetable frame, long as a hand, its quill still sharp at one end. You pick it up expecting grit and find it weightless, the barbs fanning out and closing again as you turn it in the light.

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Lost property, the sign above the office door says, though nobody has ever filed a feather. Mr Okafor from the signal box once claimed the station pigeons were moulting, and Dorota in the buffet swears a jay came in through the roof vents in March. You put the feather on the counter beside the stapler and the tea-stained ledger, and you tell yourself you will bag it in the morning. You don't. Instead you watch it lift a little each time the heating ticks on, as if something on the far side of the glass has changed its mind.

At half past eleven the night sleeper's announcement crackles, delayed ten minutes by a signalling fault, and a woman in a green coat comes to the hatch to ask whether her brother's train has gone. You tell her the platform is clear. She glances at the feather and says her father kept one in every coat pocket, for luck, and then she laughs at herself and goes.

Afterwards you pin the feather to the corkboard above the kettle, where it stays. Some nights the draught from the doors catches it and it turns on its pin, sure of itself, pointing back the way the last train came. You leave it there. Nobody has come to claim it, and you find you are in no hurry for them to.