Black and grey tattoo of a songbird perched on a branch with blackberries and leaves, on the shoulder, in a botanical engraving style.

Songbird on a blackberry branch

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small songbird with a streaked back and pale breast perches on a leafy branch, flanked by blackberry clusters and serrated leaves. The fine hatched and cross-hatched linework gives the feathers, leaves and berries shading in the manner of an old engraving. The design is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and sits across the top of the shoulder blade on pale skin.

Botanical Shoulder Bird Songbird Branch Blackberry Leaves Berry

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The blackberries came late that year, after the frost had taken the first flowers, and Marta's brother said it was a sign the border would close early. He said it while they knelt in the ditch under Hollin Bridge, filling the tin with fruit that stained their fingers the colour of ink. The customs post sat half a mile off across the stubble, a single lamp burning though it was still light.

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The songbird had been following them since the river. It was a plain brown thing with a pale breast, and it hopped from the hedge to the wire fence and back again, never going far. Marta said it was a sparrow. Tomas said no, it was a wren that had lost its nerve. When they climbed out of the ditch it flew ahead and settled on a bramble branch at the gate, and it sang, not loudly, the way a person hums when they are not sure anyone is listening.

At the post the officer asked what they were carrying. Tomas held up the tin. The officer looked at the berries, then at the bird on the branch behind them, which had not moved. He asked whose bird it was. Marta said it belonged to whoever was going to be let through, and he laughed and waved them on. They walked the last stretch into the next country with the tin between them and the song going on behind, and it was only at the far gate that Marta noticed the stains on her fingers had spread up her wrist like a map she would have to learn.