Fine line tattoo of three crossed arrows with feathered fletching on the upper back, beside the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three crossed arrows on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare upper back shows a small tattoo of three arrows crossed at their midpoints, each with a feathered tail and an arrowhead at one end. The linework is thin and even, rendered in a single dark ink with no shading. The design sits off the spine on one side, with the rest of the back and loose hair filling the frame in warm, orange-tinted light.

Fine line Back Arrow Feather Crossed arrows

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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

Your mother says you still won't answer the door when the bell goes after ten, so I am writing instead, which is what people do when they have run out of nerve and paper both. The shop on Tanner Lane has been shut since March. Tonight I took the last of the goose feathers out of the cupboard and sorted them by curl, the way your grandfather taught us, while the last bus hissed outside and a man sang something in Polish under the railway arch.

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You remember the three arrows he made for the county shoot the year you were nine. He crossed them at the middle with waxed thread and told you a fletcher never sends one shaft alone, because the first always finds the wind. You thought that was nonsense. You shot yours wide into the allotments and cried over the feather that came off in the hedge. I found it last week, still green at the tip, pressed flat in the ledger between March and April.

I am not asking you to come back to the trade. I am asking you to come on Sunday and take the bench. I have wrapped the three best shafts in brown paper and written your name on them in his capitals, which I never could copy. They are lying crossed under the lamp exactly as he left them, and I have not had the heart to move them.

If you don't come, I will leave the lamp on in the window. Anyone walking past late will see three arrows crossed on the bench and know someone is still waiting for the wind to change. Your loving aunt, Win.