Black ink illustration of a songbird perched on a leafy branch, with partial script beside it, on the inner wrist and forearm.

Songbird on a branch with script on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink songbird sits on a leafy branch, shown in fine, detailed linework with hatched shading across the body and tail. Partial handwritten script runs beside the branch, with the words 'Mockingbird' legible. The image is a close view of a pale forearm and wrist against a plain white background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Brother Anselm, The grey bird has moved back into the almonry wall, and this time it has learned the Compline bell. On Tuesday the whole refectory stopped with spoons halfway to mouths, because a thin song came over the yard doing the three strokes, the pause, then the fourth stroke a shade early, exactly as Brother Cuthbert always rang it when his wrists were bad. Jerome wants the air rifle the cellarer uses on crows. He says a bird that mocks the house is a thief, and that a thief should be dealt with before Vespers.

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Father Ambrose has said no, and he has said it with the old gardener's rule, the one Tobias used to tell every novice who came up the hill with a catapult in his sleeve. It is a sin to harm a bird that only sings for us. Tobias never said where he had the rule from, and I have stopped asking. Ambrose says he will hear no more about the rifle, and then he goes out to the wall at dusk with his hands folded in his sleeves and stands there listening like a boy.

I went out last night myself. The bird was on the top stone, its head tipped towards the empty cell window where Cuthbert slept, and it was singing the psalm he always got wrong in the same place, the same small stumble before the Gloria. I have left the cell window open since, and there is a heel of bread on the sill. Ambrose noticed and said nothing, which I have decided is permission. Come at Easter if you can. You will hear him yourself.

Your brother in the cold, Matthias

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