Black and grey realism tattoo of a large tree with spreading canopy and twisted trunk on the forearm, with the word BALANCE in capitals beneath it.

Tree with BALANCE lettering on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large tree with a full, shaded canopy and a twisted trunk fills most of the forearm, with ground foliage at its base. The tree is rendered in fine shading and detailed bark and leaf texture, with soft grey tones and darker accents. The word BALANCE sits in clean block capitals beneath the tree, and the photo is taken straight on against a dark wooden background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

Keep reading

The men from the council came on Tuesday with a tape measure and a clipboard, wanting to know why the old olive by the ovens still stands when the road has been moved twice. I told them it has never once asked permission. It leans over the bakery wall like a man trying to read a letter over someone's shoulder, and every winter the wind takes a bite out of its canopy and every spring it grows back heavier on the other side.

You will laugh, but the trunk is the reason I open the shutters at four. Father used to say the tree had been twisting for two hundred years, one half reaching for the sea, the other for the hill, and that a thing pulled both ways only stays up if it keeps its weight evenly spread. He said it the morning he taught me to knead, flour to my elbows, the dough slapping the board while the sky was still the colour of wet slate.

So I have kept the ovens lit and the lamp on the bench, and I count the loaves the way he counted the roots. Thirty-two this morning, the crust cracked just so. The surveyor wanted to cut the trunk back to a stump. I gave him a heel of rye and a cup of coffee and told him to come back at dawn and see what the light does to the leaves.

He did not come back. But the tree did what it always does, and when the sun finally lifted over the hill, the shadow of every branch lay straight across the flour sacks like the lines of a ledger that finally add up.

Come home in June. Bring the boys. The bread is good, and the tree is still here.

Love, Ilse

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