Colour tattoo of a geometric sparrow perched on a branch, in purple, blue and pink tones, on the lower back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Geometric sparrow on a branch

Geometric · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a small sparrow in profile, built from angular facets, perched on a thin branch with a sprig of twigs to the right. The bird is shaded with soft purple, blue and grey tones and has pink accents on its breast. Bold dark outlines and light, watery blending give the piece a painterly, faceted look on the lower back.

Geometric Back Bird Branch Twig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had got into the water butt again, so I was breaking the ice with the heel of the coal shovel when Dad came out of the back kitchen with two mugs and nothing to say about it. He never said much before seven. Along the top of the hedge, where the blackthorn had been cut back to knuckles, a cock sparrow was working through the straw Gareth had spread for the ewes, all sharp shoulders and grey cap, flicking the ground as if it owed him money.

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Dad put a mug in my hand and nodded at it. "Your mother used to count them," he said. "Every January, off the sill, same number as the day before. Said if one went missing you'd know by the feel of the house." I asked him what the number was. He shrugged and said he'd never once got it right, because they never sat still long enough, and that she'd kept a tally in the back of the feed book. I found it that afternoon under the feed merchant's invoices, a column of pencil strokes gathered in fives, the last one dated the week before she went into the hospice in Hereford.

I counted them from the kitchen window the next morning with a cup going cold in my hands. Eleven on the hedge, two on the wire, and one on the old plough handle by the gate, the bird with the crooked tail, balancing on a thin stick of hawthorn he had no business being on. I took the pencil and added a stroke. Dad came in, looked over my shoulder, and said nothing, which was how I knew he'd counted too.

Then the wind came across the top field and every sparrow went up together, and for a moment the yard was full of small grey angles turning in the light, too many to tally. I stood in the cold and let them go. I didn't write that one down.