Black line drawing of a bird in flight with flowing swirls, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flying bird with swirling tail

Black and grey · Flash

A single bird in flight faces right, with its wing raised and its long tail feathers trailing into a curling flourish. The linework is bold and continuous, with solid black strokes and no shading. The design is in black ink on a white background, with open space around the bird and swirls.

Bird Dove Swirl Flourish Wing Feather

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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

Dear Marguerite, the dove came back to the garden wall this morning, the same one that wouldn't leave the pear tree the summer your father was ill. I watched it from the kitchen window with my tea going cold. It sat on the coping stone, lifted one wing as if testing the air, and then it was gone over the hedge in that long, unhurried way it has, the tail feathers trailing out behind like ribbon someone had dropped.

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I know you think I've been fanciful since the funeral. Perhaps I have. But Mr Okonedo next door has been clipping his roses for a week now, and he told me yesterday that the curls on the old iron gate are the first thing he noticed when he moved in, before he even saw the house. He said they reminded him of the flourish his mother used to draw at the bottom of her letters home. I hadn't known she wrote letters. I hadn't known much about any of them.

So I've decided to plant the blue clematis you always wanted along the north fence, the one that climbs in loops. Mr Okonedo has promised to hold the ladder. The gardener says it will take three years to flower properly, which suits me fine. I want something slow in the garden, something that doesn't ask me to hurry.

Come for Sunday lunch when you can. Bring the photographs from the attic, and we'll see if the bird is in any of them. I suspect it has been here longer than either of us.

Love, Mum