Neo-traditional tattoo of an hourglass with a bare tree inside, held by two hands on the upper arm.

Hourglass with dead tree held in hands

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

An hourglass with a bare, leafless tree growing from its amber sand sits on a metal cap, flanked by two grey hands cupping a dark mound of sand, with a beaded cuff at each wrist. Bold black outlines define the glass, frame and hands, with soft grey shading giving the glass a reflective look. Warm brown tones appear in the sand against otherwise grey and black ink on lightly tanned skin, centred in the frame.

Neo-trad Upper arm Hourglass Tree Hand Sand Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Keep your hands in that dough, Tomas, and listen, because the sun is an hour off and the loaves won't wait for it. The old baker on Hallow Lane kept an hourglass on the shelf above the proving drawers. Its sand was dark as treacle. Each morning he turned it before he lit the ovens, and each morning the sand ran down into the bottom bulb as if it had somewhere better to be.

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Then one winter the sand stopped running. A bare tree came up out of the middle of the glass, grey and leafless as a broom handle, and his wife said it was only the damp getting in. He said nothing. He carried the glass down to the cellar, cupped it in both hands the way you'd hold a bird that had flown into a window, and sat with it until the ovens went cold above him.

Three nights he sat there. On the fourth he came up grey with cellar dust, tipped the glass, and let the sand pour into his palms. It was heavy and warm and smelled of rye. He understood then that he had been holding his last years back in a glass, and that the tree was what grows in a thing kept too long. He walked out to the step and let the wind take the whole dark handful, then went back in to knead.

The bread that morning rose higher than it had in forty years. Now mind your dough, Tomas. Let it go where it wants to go.