Fine line black outline of a small flying bird tattooed on an ankle, shown in a polaroid style photo.

Small bird outline on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline of a bird in flight sits on the side of an ankle. The single dark line has fine, even linework with no shading or fill. The ink is set against a soft, pale background, with the bird placed near the centre of the frame.

Fine line Ankle Bird

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last dove in the Halloran Brothers' tent has refused to fly for three weeks, and you are the one who has to coax it out of the basket before the eight o'clock house. Mr Vell insists the birds are part of the act, that the audience pays for the wings. You know they are just tired pigeons he bought off a dealer in Leeds, and that the one called Pearl has been sitting on her own feet since Tuesday.

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Rain drums on the canvas. Half the seats are empty, the sawdust is damp, and the strongman has gone home to his mother's in Hull without a word. You kneel by the wicker basket with a handful of millet and wait, the way your grandmother taught you to wait for a wren in a hedge. Nothing happens for a long time. Then Pearl steps onto your wrist, lifts her head towards the gap in the flap where the lamplight is coming through, and goes.

Nobody in the stands sees her leave. They see the spotlight drift up into the rigging and find only a grey shape turning above the trapeze, then wheeling out through the slit where the canvas was never quite sewn shut. Mr Vell swears at you from the wings. The band plays on regardless, a little ragged, a little brave. You stand in the sawdust with empty hands and feel, for the first time in a month, that the ring might be something you could walk away from.

Outside, the fairground lights are going off one by one along the car park. You look up. Somewhere past the dark ferris wheel a pale wing catches the last of the floodlight, and then it is simply gone, into a sky that does not belong to anyone's contract.