Stylised songbird on the side of a thigh
Dotwork · Thigh · Mixed · Photo
A stylised songbird stands in profile with a grey dotwork body, an orange throat and breast, and a teal patch on the belly. The rounded body below the wing is filled with concentric line hatching, and the bird has thin black legs and feet. The design sits on smooth skin against blue fabric, with the colour and stippled shading clearly visible.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Pull up a stool and keep your voice down, the ovens are only just ticking and the dough hasn't decided yet what kind of morning it's having. I'll tell you about the robin on Tanner Street, because it sat on the rim of the proving drawer every night for forty years and nobody ever asked it to leave.
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Nell Carrow had the bakery then, and she swore at that bird every morning. She flapped a tea towel at it, cursed its thin black feet, and said it was a rat in a waistcoat. The robin only tipped its head, took a crumb from the flour scoop and sang at the dough as if the dough owed it money. Its throat was the colour of the oven mouth when the fire was new, and under its wing the round belly was ruled in fine lines, like the rings you count in a felled oak.
The winter Nell's husband died, she stopped baking before the light. The shutters stayed down. Then one grey morning the robin was on the step, singing at the locked door, and she could not bear the noise of it. She came down in her coat, lit the first oven with shaking hands, and the bird flew straight to the sill above the window and sang until the bread rose. By spring the queue ran round the corner again. People said it was the bread. Nell knew better. The robin had only wanted someone to get up in the dark and answer it.
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