Colour tattoo of a phoenix in red, orange and yellow spreading its wings with a flowing flame tail, on the side of a person's torso.

Phoenix in flight on a side body

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A phoenix is shown mid-flight, with outstretched red and dark wings, a yellow and orange body and a long tail of flame-like feathers trailing down and across the skin. Soft shading and blended colour create depth in the wings, and small orange embers drift around the bird. The design sits on the side of the torso with the bird angled diagonally, and a hand with red nails rests at the upper edge of the frame.

Ribs Phoenix Bird Flame Feather Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last neon bird over Digbeth had been dark for eleven years, and the council wanted it down by Friday. Nobody sent a crane, though. They sent me, up a fire escape at half past one in the morning, with a torch, a bag of spare electrodes and a clipboard asking whether the sign was of heritage interest.

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The phoenix was bigger than it had looked from the street. Its wings ran the length of the roof, red tubes gone black at the joints, and its tail was a sweep of gold glass that looped down the parapet like something poured. Pigeons had nested in its throat. I found the fault in the tail, a hairline crack where the gas had leaked out years ago, and a grey smear of paint someone had tried to hide it with. I scraped it back with a flat blade until the orange showed through.

Gas took a long time to warm and longer to trust. I sat on the parapet with my legs over the drop and watched the bulbs stutter, then catch, first the head, then the wings going up one feather at a time, until the whole thing burned the colour of a struck match above the ring road. Sparks from my soldering had landed on my sleeve and gone out, and a few more drifted up past me, slow, as if the bird had shed them.

Down in the square a taxi slowed and a man leaned out to look up. I didn't wave. I pulled the clipboard from under my arm and wrote, in the box for heritage interest, Keep it lit. Then I climbed down before the light could change its mind.