Black and grey realism tattoo of gnarled tree trunks and branches arranged in staggered rectangular panels across a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gnarled tree trunks in panels on a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person's bare upper back is covered with a large tattoo of twisted tree trunks and branches, divided into staggered rectangular panels with bold black outlines. The rendering uses fine, soft shading and detailed bark textures in greys, giving the wood a realistic three-dimensional form. The panels are arranged in a loose cross-like pattern across the shoulder blades and spine, with a plain wooden wall behind the subject.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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You asked in your last whether the old oak in the chapel ever finished growing, and I can tell you now it has not. It came up through the flagstones of the nave the spring after the roof went, and by October its trunk was thicker than my thigh and split the altar step clean in two. Mr Harrow from the council wants it felled. I have asked for a month. I have been drawing it every evening by the light of the one lamp I'm allowed to burn in the vestry.

I have stopped trying to draw the whole thing. It won't sit still on one sheet. So I cut the paper into rectangles the size of the arched window frames that were here before the fire, and I draw one piece of trunk on each, the way the light falls through the broken glass. Eleven pieces so far. Some of them are only knots. The bottom one is the root where it enters the floor, and it has a hollow you could put your fist into. I spent three nights on that hollow and I am not sure yet it is finished.

Yesterday I laid them out across the vestry floor, staggered like bricks, and walked back and forth looking at them until the lamp guttered. The wood doesn't line up from one panel to the next. It doesn't need to. Somewhere under the gaps it must still be going up toward the sky the way it was going before anyone built the walls.

I'm sending you the rubbing of the hollow, since you never believe my descriptions. Keep it flat. The council may come for the tree on Friday, and I would rather one copy of it was somewhere safe.

Your loving sister, Ada

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