Black and grey phoenix tattoo with spread wings across the upper back, its feathered tail trailing down the spine to the lower back in a shaded realistic style.

Phoenix with peacock feather tail on back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large phoenix with outstretched wings and clawed feet spans the upper back, with its wing feathers rendered in fine pencil-like linework and soft grey shading. Its long tail feathers run down the spine toward the lower back, each ending in peacock-style eye motifs. The tattoo is entirely black and grey and fills most of the frame against plain skin and a neutral background.

Realism Back Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Peacock eye Talon Back piece

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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You were right not to come to the reunion, though I wish you'd been there to watch Gordon Pike tell the sports hall how he carried Mr Hollis's peacocks out of the burning art block single-handed. It was you and me who carried them. Gordon only held the door, and he's been holding it open in his story ever since.

Do you remember the shoebox? The summer before we left, the old cock moulted so badly that the caretaker swept up whole fans of feather every morning, and we kept the best ones under my bed. After the fire, the only thing left standing in the car park was the iron frame of the kiln, and someone had chalked a single green eye on its blackened side, the way Hollis used to sign his marking sheets. I never found out who did it.

At the reunion, Mrs Dunning asked me whether I still had any of the feathers. I said no, which was true. What I didn't say was that I'd spent three nights last spring trying to draw the thing I remembered from the flames, a bird with its wings thrown wide, its tail going up in eyes instead of smoke. My drawings were all wrong. They looked like something getting out of a fire, not something built from one.

I've pinned the best of them above the sink. The light from the window catches the pencil lines when the kettle's on, and for a moment the wings seem to lift. I thought you'd want to know that the eyes still look back at you. Write soon, and tell me Gordon's lying about the door too.

Love, Maureen