Black and grey realism tattoo of a grandfather clock with butterflies lifting from its top and roots spreading beneath it, on the side of the ribs.

Grandfather clock with butterflies and roots

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A grandfather clock with a round clock face and a visible pendulum is shown in the centre, with butterflies and small moths flying up and away from its top. Roots spread out from the base of the clock and fade into the skin, with fine shading and soft grey gradients. The design is in black ink and greys and runs vertically along the side of the torso.

Realism Ribs Clock Butterfly Moth Root

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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The clock came back from Hollis's on Tuesday, wrapped in two moth-eaten blankets and smelling of his workshop, which is to say of oil and wet newspaper. He has cleaned the movement and replaced the bush that worried you, and he says it will keep good time for another hundred years if somebody remembers to wind it on Sundays. I have decided that somebody is me.

You will recall the wedding. We carried it out under the lime trees so the photographer could have the orchard behind it, and the ground was soft from a week of rain. By the time the vicar reached the vows the clock had sunk an inch on one side and its door had sprung open. When Tom reached in to steady the pendulum, a cloud of small brown butterflies lifted out of the case and climbed through the branches as if someone had called them by name. Nobody could say where they came from. Hollis insists the case had been a hatching box for years, which I do not believe, but I like to think about it.

The clock stopped at four minutes past two, the moment Tom said "I will", and it kept that time until the cleaning. Hollis asked what hour I wanted it set to. I told him to leave it where it was, because some hours are worth keeping. I went back to the orchard on Sunday to look at the base where it had stood. The grass has been cut flat, but beneath the lime I found pale threads pushed up through the soil, as fine as hair, and I have not yet had the heart to pull them.

Yours, as ever, Ruth