Black and grey phoenix tattoo with spread wings and a long flowing tail running down the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix with spread wings on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A phoenix with wings fully spread rises up the forearm, with its head and crest near the elbow and a long, feathered tail trailing towards the wrist. The feathers are drawn with dark outlines and filled with layered grey shading, giving depth to the wings and tail. The design is shown in black and grey ink against plain skin, with a dark floral top in the background.

Forearm Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, you will think I have lost my wits, but I am writing this by the lamp at the back window because Father is asleep and I would not dare say it aloud in the kitchen. Since the fire on the number four heap the men have stopped talking about the rescue and started talking about the bird.

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They say it came up out of the ash on the Tuesday, before the shift bell, when the cinders were still too hot to walk on. Its wings spread wider than the lamp-room door, feathers the grey of pit dust on a Sunday coat, and a tail that unspooled down the slope of the heap like wet hair. Mr Haskett swears it was only steam off the cooling slag, but steam has no feathers. I know, because I have watched it come off the washery my whole life and never once seen it fold its wings.

I did not believe them until I saw the drawing. Young Peter Lowe had chalked it on the wall of the pit-head baths, and I stood there in my clogs with my wage slip still in my fist and copied every line onto the back of it with Father's old carpenter's pencil. The outlines are the same. The crest is the same. When I held the slip up to the window it looked less like a picture and more like a map of where something had been.

Yesterday the cage came up empty for the first time since the fire, and the overman said the air on the second level was sweet enough to light a pipe. I am keeping the slip in my apron pocket. Keep your eyes on the sky over the coast, Ada, and if you see a grey bird with a long tail going the wrong way for the sea, write and tell me it was not just smoke.