Traditional coloured tattoo of a red heart inside a wooden coffin, surrounded by green leaves, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart in a coffin with leaves on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A red heart with an orange outline and dark drips sits inside a brown wooden coffin, framed by green leaves. Bold black linework and solid colour fills give it a flat, classic look. Parts of other tattoos show at the bottom edge of the frame, and a black clothing sleeve sits at the top.

Traditional Upper arm Heart Coffin Leaves Drip

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Harold,

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The wooden box came in on the six-forty from Crewe, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with a knot only a railwayman would trust. Mr Pryce has the flu, so the left luggage ledger is mine until Monday, and I have spent the afternoon trying not to read the tag. It says only “Collect after the last train. Ask for Ivy.” I am Ivy. Nobody has asked me anything yet.

The lid is painted, Harold, a red heart with an orange rim sitting in a coffin of brown grain, and somebody has wound green leaves round the whole thing as if it were a garden bed. Three dark drops hang off the lower point. I stood under the gaslight turning it this way and that, and the box was lighter than it had any right to be, the sort of lightness that makes you think something inside has already gone. I did not open it. That was not my business, and the tag was very clear.

At ten to midnight a young man came along platform four, his collar soaked from the rain, and stood at my hatch without speaking. He looked at the box for a long time. Then he said, “Keep it another week, would you? I’m not ready to be the one who carries it.” I told him the rule was seven days and then the porter takes it to the lost property shed. He nodded like a man who had expected that answer and had hoped for the other.

I wrote his name on a fresh ticket, Harold, pinned it to the box’s rope, and put the box on shelf fourteen beside the umbrellas. The last train went out at twelve fourteen with its lamps swinging down the line. I keep thinking of those leaves, painted so carefully, growing round a thing that has already stopped beating. Come up at Easter if you can. I’ll show you the box myself.

Love, Ivy