Black and grey tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, with a lotus flower, feathers, swirling lines and dotwork.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus and feather sleeve on upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's upper arm and shoulder, cropped below the chin, with a black and grey tattoo sleeve. A lotus flower sits above two feathers, with curling swirl lines and dangling triangular drops running down the arm. Stippled dotwork arcs across the shoulder, and the fine lines are crisp against the skin under soft, dark lighting.

Dotwork Fine line Upper arm Shoulder Lotus Feather Swirl Dot Drop Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The river came up in the night, so the last crossing at Hallow Bridge was a lorry, two students asleep against their windows, and a man with a canvas rucksack he would not put on the belt. I asked him to open it. He undid the flap with the care of someone unwrapping a bird's egg. Inside, wrapped in a tea towel, were grey feathers as long as my forearm, laid side by side, and a lotus head pressed flat between two sheets of blotting paper gone the colour of weak tea.

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'Declare them,' I said, because that is the job. He said his sister had died in March and the feathers had come out of her pillow when the hospice nurses moved her. Every spring she had kept one feather from each bird that landed on her windowsill, and he wanted to take them down to where the river went.

I have a form for most things but not for that. I turned the tea towel over and found a faint ring stain on the blotting paper, a scatter of dark dots like rain on the glass of my booth. I thought of how a line can be pricked out one small mark at a time and still hold its shape when the weather changes.

I stamped the slip NOTHING TO DECLARE and slid it under the glass. He thanked me. Behind him the lorry's engine caught, the barrier lifted, and the river went on rising, as it does, without being asked.