Black lace heart tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with a flock of small black birds flying away from it in blackwork style.

Lace heart with birds on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black lace heart with a floral, mesh-like pattern sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, and a trail of small black bird silhouettes flies out from its right edge towards the spine. The lace is rendered in bold black lines with open areas of bare skin, while the birds are solid black shapes of varying size and angle. The photograph is taken from behind and slightly above, with the subject's shoulder and neck cropped at the edges against a blurred light background.

Blackwork Back Heart Lace Bird Flock Silhouette Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sister Agnes had the finest hands at Saint Brannoc's, and the abbot said so so often that the other sisters stopped listening. In the wet months she sat by the north window with her bobbins clacking like small rain, making collars and cuffs for the bishop's household.

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One winter the prioress ordered a heart. Not a plain heart, but a veil of lace in that shape, for the chapel where the fishing widows came to light their candles for men who did not come home. Agnes thought it foolish work. The mesh was so fine it would tear if anyone breathed on it. She worked through Advent with a candle at her elbow, pinning each loop, and the lace grew dense at the middle and thin at the edges, where she left the holes open on purpose.

When it was finished, the prioress held it to the light and frowned. "Where are the birds?" Agnes said there were no birds in the pattern. The prioress said the swallows had nested in the bell tower all summer, and at dusk they had sat along the sill of the north window and watched the needle go in and out. Agnes laughed, then stopped laughing, because the window was shut and the sill was bare.

On the feast of the drowned, the widows lifted the lace on a pole above the altar. The thin edges stirred in the draught. Small dark shapes rose from the stones, scattered out through the open door, and went over the wall towards the grey sea. The widows watched them go and did not weep. That night Agnes swept the floor and found a single bobbin pin on the sill, bent into the shape of a wing.