Colour tattoo of swirling music notes in blue and pink with a black treble clef heart below, across a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Music notes and treble clef heart on ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A swirling ribbon of black musical notes and treble clefs runs diagonally across the side of the torso, trailing blue and pink wash-like streaks. A black outlined heart containing a treble clef sits at the lower end of the design. The shading is soft and the colour fades out at the edges of the swirls, with the bold black notes providing contrast.

Ribs Music note Treble clef Heart Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the snow came down on Tuesday and has not let up since, so I am writing this at the long table in the Fox and Hound with my boots steaming by the grate and a candle stub guttering beside the ink. Mr Haddow says the moor road will stay shut until Thursday at the earliest. I have told him I am in no hurry, which is only half a lie.

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The piano in the corner is a wreck. Half its keys have gone the colour of old teeth, and the middle C sticks like a drunk at a door. I was hired to tune it for the Christmas dance and instead spent the afternoon coaxing it back to speech with a tuning hammer and a bent knitting needle. Last night, while the carter and the widow Pryce played cards, I sat down and picked out the hymn Father used to whistle over the washing. The notes came out in a ribbon, climbing and curling the way smoke does when the damper opens, and the card game stopped.

This morning a boy of about nine was copying the tune onto the back of a bill of fare with a pencil stub. He had no notion of clefs, so he drew each note as a little black bead on a wire and smudged the edges with his thumb. At the bottom of the page he drew a heart and put a curl inside it, the way I used to draw them on your slate when we were small. I asked him where he learned that. He shrugged and said nobody had taught him. He had only watched the tune go up and down and decided it ought to have a shape.

I have decided to take his page home with me, and to tell Father the piano did not beat me after all. If the lane opens on Thursday I will bring it to you, and you can tell me whether the heart is the right shape, or whether he has put the curl the wrong way round.