Black and grey fine line tattoo of a hummingbird flying out of an open birdcage on a woman's upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird leaving a birdcage on a back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with long dark hair, showing a tattoo on her upper back beside the shoulder blade. A small hummingbird in flight moves towards a domed birdcage with its door swung open, drawn with fine black outlines and light hatched shading on the cage bars. The ink is black and grey against a plain teal wall, and the tattoo sits on the right side of the frame.

Fine line Back Hummingbird Birdcage Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last of the cages went onto the lorry on a wet Tuesday in March, and Mr Vosper stood under the awning counting them off on his fingers as though they might make a bid for freedom. The canaries had gone the previous autumn to a pet shop in Grimsby. What was left was the domed cage with the brass finial, and in it sat Pip, the hummingbird my father had won off a sailor in Valparaiso before I was born. Pip had never flown a single show. She perched on a twig no longer than a matchstick and drank sugar water from a teaspoon, and the crowds who paid to see her mostly saw a smudge of green and went back to their candyfloss.

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"She'll not last a fortnight out there," Mr Vosper said. "Hummingbirds don't know what grows in a hedge."

"Then she'll starve free," I said, which was the only argument I had, and he shrugged in the way that meant he had already stopped caring.

I eased the little wire door open with a hairpin, the way Dad taught me to open a lock nobody else had the key for. For a long time nothing happened. Pip ticked her head at the gap as if it were a rumour she didn't trust. Then she lifted, hung in the air beside the bars for a second, and went out over the car park, past the torn flags on the big top, a green flicker you could lose against the hawthorn.

Mr Vosper watched her go and said nothing. When the lorry pulled out, I left the empty cage on the step with its door swinging in the wind, and it creaked on its hinge long after the engine had faded down the lane.