Black and white photo of a blackwork winged bird tattoo with spread wings on a woman's upper chest, while her hand holds a strap of her top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged bird tattoo on upper chest

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a large bird with spread wings tattooed on the upper chest, below the collarbone. The linework is bold and symmetrical, with dark solid fills and fine hatched detail across the wings and body. The woman's hand is holding a dark strap and the grey top is slipped off the shoulder, with the soft-focus background drawing attention to the tattoo.

Blackwork Chest Bird Wing Eagle Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The trunk was already bumping down the third stair when Edith Cobb noticed the bird had gone crooked above the front door. Mr Ruddock had insisted on hanging it himself the week he arrived, a carved eagle no longer than her forearm, its wings spread wide and stained the colour of wet slate. He had cut it from a piece of oak the tide had brought up under the groyne, and every feather was angled so the morning light came through the gaps and laid thin bars across the hall tiles.

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"It wants to face the sea," he said, not looking up from the buckle of his case. "It always did. The wings were never meant to sit square to the house." He had paid his last week in coins counted onto the hall table, and she had not asked why a man who spent his evenings whittling would leave with his hands so cut up from the knife.

She reached up to straighten it and found the bird fixed fast with long iron nails, driven in deep by someone who had meant it to stay. Beneath the left wing, where the carving met the wood of the lintel, a name had been scored in small capitals so neat she had to tilt her head to read it. TOM COBB. Below it, a date from the spring her husband's boat had not come back.

By the time she had found the hammer, Mr Ruddock was past the gate and the cart was turning onto the front. Edith left the bird where it was. In the afternoon the sun came round, and the shadow of its wings fell across the step, pointing out past the pier.