Close-up of a multicoloured stylised bird with spread wings, in pink, blue, green and yellow with a brown outline, on a woman's upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised bird on the chest

Chest · Mixed · Photo

A stylised bird with outstretched wings is shown in close view on the upper chest, with its head turned to the side and a round body patterned with a brown grid. The wing feathers are filled with bands of pink, purple, blue, green and yellow, outlined in dark brown. Soft natural light and a blue patterned scarf sit beside the design, with loose hair crossing the frame.

Chest Bird Wing Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The gulls have finally given up on the fish market, so I can write without shouting over them. Mr Okonedo came round to the shop yesterday with the bird you sent from Lisbon, the wooden one with its wings spread wide as a door. He wants it repainted before the regatta. I told him it was not mine to touch, that the colours were yours, and he laughed and said the colours were the only thing about it anyone remembered.

So I did it anyway, and you can scold me when you're back. I kept the brown grid on the body, the little squares you insisted were a fishing net pulled over a sun. The feathers I did in the pinks, greens and yellows from the tin Father left under the stairs, outlined in that dark brown you hated because it looked like mud. It does look like mud. It also looks like the cliffs after rain, which I think is why it works.

Mr Okonedo collected it this morning and paid me in cuttlefish, which I've decided is a fair price for a month's work. He asked where the bird was flying. I didn't know what to say, so I said towards the harbour mouth, which seemed the sensible answer.

Come home when the wind turns. The bird is on the wall above the till now, wings out, watching the door. Every time someone comes in I half expect it to be you.

Love, Nell