Shaded guitar neck and body with a swirling musical staff and notes across the upper back, in grey and purple ink.

Guitar and musical notes on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A shaded guitar, showing the headstock, tuning pegs, neck and body, sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade. A thin black line staff curls up from the body of the guitar and carries several musical notes. The guitar is rendered in grey tones with purple shading on the body and soft red-brown tones around the edges.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan,

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The wood came down in the gale on Tuesday, the old Bramley by the lower gate, split clean along the trunk as if someone had planned it. Mr Okafor from the next farm sawed it into lengths and let me have the best of it for the price of a pint, which I thought was daft until I saw the grain. It is pale gold with a line of darker rings like the notes on Dad's sheet music, and when I tapped it the sound went on longer than it had any right to.

I have been at the bench every evening since. The headstock took three nights. I cut the slots for the pegs twice, the first time too deep, and I sat on the back step with a mug of cold tea trying to decide whether to burn the blank or keep going. Mum came out with the torch and said the apples would not wait for me to finish sulking. She was right about that, though the apples have been dropping regardless.

Last night I fitted the neck and strung it with the old set from Dad's case, the ones he never got round to changing. When I played the first chord the whole orchard went quiet, or I imagined it did, and a wasp stopped circling the windfalls to listen. I copied the tune onto the staff paper you sent, the one with the curling line, and it looked like smoke rising from the body.

I'm sending you the sheet and a photo of the headstock. Tell Grandad the pegs are brass from the hardware shop in Ledbury, not new, so he can't say I've wasted money. Come up at the weekend and hear it properly. I've left the bottom of the neck unfinished so you can sign it.

Love, Rhiannon

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