Colour and grey neo-traditional tattoo on the outer thigh showing an hourglass with teal and pink sand, a daisy, and a pocket watch with a heart-shaped face and beaded chain.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hourglass, pocket watch and daisy on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

An ornate hourglass with a decorative grey top sits at the centre of the design, with teal and pink sand and shaded glass. A white daisy with a yellow centre sits to its left, and a pocket watch with a heart in place of its dial hangs on the right, linked to a beaded chain that loops below. The linework is bold and black with grey shading, and the colour is limited to teal and pink accents against the grey.

Neo-trad Traditional Thigh Hourglass Daisy Pocket watch Heart Chain Flower Clock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Okafor had the bench by the window in Pell Street, and Tobias was not permitted to touch the escapement until he could tell the difference between a sand glass and a lie. That was what the old man said when he set the hourglass down between them, its brass cap curled like a Victorian mantelpiece. "Sand runs whether you watch or not," he said. "Everything in this shop runs whether you watch or not."

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Tobias spent the winter learning to count grains. He learned that the teal sand in the top bulb fell faster when the room was warm, and that the pink clogged if the glass was not turned by hand each morning. He learned to set a pocket watch by the bells of St Mary's, to oil the chain links so they would not stiffen, and to press a daisy from the garden between card so it would look fresh for a day and then for years.

On the last Friday of February, the old man did not come down the stairs. Tobias found him in his chair with the hourglass on his knee, the top bulb nearly empty and the heart on the watch face he had painted that morning still wet. Tobias did not turn the glass. He sat with it until the last pink grain slipped through, then he lifted it, turned it over, and set it back on the bench, because that was what the shop was for.