Fine line black script reading free with a small bird in flight beside the final letter, tattooed on the upper chest above a grey neckline.

Free script and bird on the upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A thin, flowing script word reading free sits on the skin with a small solid black bird in flight beside its final letter. The linework is fine and even, with the lettering rendered in a single dark ink and no shading or colour. The soft-focus background and grey top at the lower edge frame the tattoo, which sits slightly off centre.

Fine line Lettering Chest Free Bird Word

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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 Ilse, they kept me forty minutes at the booth, which is a long time for a woman with one suitcase and a pencil drawing of a swallow. The officer, a young man with a chipped thumbnail, asked what the drawing was for. I told him it was for my sister, who has never once believed a border would let her go.

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He tapped the sheet where I'd written the word free in my own unsteady hand, then the small bird I'd put in flight beside its last letter. 'Is this a promise or an instruction?' he said. I didn't know. I told him the bird had been Mama's idea, that she'd drawn it on the back of a tram ticket in 1961 and folded it into my coat pocket the morning we left.

He stamped the page without another question. Outside, the car park smelled of diesel and wet cardboard, and I stood there turning the tram ticket over in my glove. It lives in my purse now, creased soft as cloth. I haven't decided where the bird should go, only that it should be somewhere I can see it when I am tired and want to be elsewhere.

Write back soon and tell me whether the bird still looks like it is leaving. I think it does. Your loving aunt, Greta.