Black blackwork tree of life with exposed roots inside a circle on a chest, with birds flying off the branches towards the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree of life and birds on the chest

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tree with spreading branches and exposed roots sits inside a circular frame on the upper chest. A flock of small bird silhouettes lifts from the branches and flies towards the shoulder. The piece uses bold black silhouette shapes with no grey shading, and the tattoo is centred on the chest with the shoulder visible at the edge of the frame.

Blackwork Chest Shoulder Tree of life Tree Root Bird Circle Flock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The first loaves were out before the milk float reached the end of Harrow Lane, and by then I had burned my wrist twice on the lip of the deck oven and decided that I was not a baker. Dad had been one for thirty-one years. He knew to score the tops deeper, to let the dough rest longer, and to stop talking to the starter as if it were a difficult aunt. I only knew how to watch the clock.

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The doorstop by the back door was a slab of cherry wood from the tree that came down in the gale the winter Mum left. Its roots still knotted on it like fists. Dad used to stand in the yard before unlocking the shutters and look at the stump the way other men looked at the football results, as if it might tell him something he had missed. I used to think he was waiting for the tree to grow back. Now I think he was just waiting.

At twenty to six the starlings came off the Coopers' chimney across the road. There were hundreds, a single fold of dark that poured over the bakery roof and split against the sky, each bird flicking its wings as if it had remembered something important. Dad called that the day's first sign. He said the whole street was a tree and the birds were what it could not keep.

I carried the last tray out into the cold and set it on the sill. The flock was thinning towards the estate and the sea, and one bird hung back over the car park, turning in a slow circle before it followed. I left the back door propped open for once, and let the morning come in to find the roots.