Colour realism tattoo of three red and orange maple leaves with water droplets and black stems, sitting on the upper arm.

Autumn maple leaves on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows three maple leaves in red, orange and yellow-green, with dark stems curving across the skin. Each leaf has soft shading, fine veins and small raised droplets of water, which give a lifelike, dewy look. Shadows beneath the leaves create depth, and the leaves are arranged in a loose diagonal across the upper arm.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Maple leaves Leaves Autumn Water droplet Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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The rain came in sideways on Tuesday and I stood at the back door with the kettle going cold, watching the Japanese maple your father planted the year we married drop the last of its red onto the wet flags. You always said it would outlive us both. It is doing its best to prove you wrong, though not quite in the way you meant.

I went out in my slippers to gather what I could before the gutter took it. Every leaf had a bead of water sitting in its hollow, perfectly round, as if someone had gone along each one with a pin. I brought a dozen in and laid them on the kitchen table to dry, and by evening the veins had gone dark and the edges had curled the way they do when they have made up their minds. Yellow at the stalk, rust at the tips, a sort of bruised orange across the middle. Nothing in a catalogue could match them.

The nurse asked me this morning whether I wanted the window shut. I said no. I wanted to hear the drip off the guttering, which is the only sound this house has made properly since you went. I have pressed three of the leaves between the pages of the atlas, the one with the Canadian provinces, because it seemed fitting for a tree that came from there.

Come at the weekend if the trains behave. I will show you the droplets. You will say I have been fussing, and then you will bend close with your reading glasses on and go quiet, the way you used to.

All my love, Edith