Back view of a woman with a large winged bird tattoo across her upper back and red roses with scrollwork on her lower back, in a Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged bird and roses across a back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows a woman seen from behind with her bare back visible, her long dark hair held up with one hand. A large winged bird, possibly a phoenix, spreads across the upper back in grey shading with darker outlines, and scrolling foliage with red roses sits on the lower back above low-rise jeans. The composition is set against a bright blue sky and a pale rocky outcrop.

Japanese Back Bird Wing Phoenix Rose Scroll Floral Woman Jeans

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ned,

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The lorry came on Tuesday with the last of the Halloran and Vane stock, and I have spent three days on my knees in the back bedroom sorting it. You will find the grey wing cape in the tea chest marked FIRE, folded under the tissue. Mind the wires. Your uncle Albert stitched them in himself the winter before the Slough fire, when the men still believed the bird would carry the act for another ten years.

It was never burned, whatever the Gazette said. Bert lifted the cape off the bird before the tent went up and carried it home in a laundry sack, slung over his shoulder like a dead dog. I think he could not bear to watch it go under the auctioneer's hammer with the tiger cages and the calliope. The roses along the hem are Mrs Vane's work, red silk on a grey ground, and every one still has a pin through its heart so the tassels won't drag.

Bert used to say a phoenix only rises when someone has the nerve to strike the match. I never had that nerve, and I am too old to start now, so I am sending it to you. Hang it where the east window catches it. If the morning sun gets into those wings, you will see the bird lift off the cloth, and then you will understand why he would not let it go.

Your loving aunt, Maud