Grey shaded bare tree with gnarled branches and a red heart hanging from a chain, tattooed along the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red heart hanging from a shaded bare tree

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

The design shows a gnarled, shaded tree with bare branches and roots curling along the side of the torso, with thorny twigs at the base. A red heart hangs from a thread or chain near the centre, with a red drip trailing beneath it. Sketchy grey linework and soft shading give the tree a textured, weathered look, and the red heart is the only colour.

Ribs Tree Branches Heart Chain Root Drip Thorn

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The florist wanted the ribbon tied to the gate, but Maud Pryce had been up since four and would have none of it. She carried her own bundle up the rise to the old ash, where the whole parish had hung its brides' hearts for as long as anyone could remember. Her grandmother's chain was looped twice around her wrist, cold from the shed, and the tin heart at the end of it was the one their mother had cut from a biscuit tin the night before Maud's christening. Her sister Nell puffed behind her, complaining about the mud on her good shoes.

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The bark was grey and split like old pastry, and the roots came up through the grass in knuckled coils. Maud reached as high as she could and hooked the chain over a stub of branch where a dozen other chains had worn the wood smooth. Down below, the church bell started its slow count. Tom Ardley would be standing at the lychgate by now, pretending he was not nervous, pretending he had not practised his vows on the cows.

The heart swung, caught the light, and a thin red streak ran from its point and down the trunk. Nell laughed and said it looked like the tree was bleeding for her. Maud wiped her thumb across the stain and found it was only paint, the old enamel flaking off where the tin had rubbed against the bark. Her mother's heart was still up there, faded to pink, its drip long since gone to rust.

She walked down the hill without looking back. At the lychgate, Tom held out his hand, and she took it, and behind them the chain went on turning in the wind, the red point catching the sun every time it came round.