Black and grey botanical tattoo of a bare tree with falling leaves on a thigh, with a figure and books tattooed on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree and falling leaves on a thigh

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in denim shorts sits on a ledge with her hand resting on her thigh, showing a bare tree with falling leaves tattooed down the leg. A second tattoo on the upper arm shows a seated figure beside stacked books, drawn with shaded linework. The image is in black and grey, with the thigh piece filling the lower half of the frame.

Botanical Upper arm Thigh Tree Leaves Figure Book

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Denis,

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You'll think I've gone soft, but they're taking the sycamore down on Thursday. The council man came round with a clipboard and a hi-vis vest that was too big for him, and he said the roots were lifting the car park and the insurers wanted it gone before the frost. I told him it had been there longer than the block. He wrote that down, I think to be polite.

So I've been going down with a carrier bag every morning before my tablets. Last week the leaves were already turning, copper at the edges, and the wind off the ring road kept sending them up against the lift doors. Mr Okafor from twelve helped me fill three bags. He reads the paper with his lips moving, but he knows every tree on this estate by its bark, which I didn't expect from a man who once told me he'd never been further than Margate.

Here's the thing I wanted to tell you. The young lass in the flat above the bins, the one who draws on everything, came down with a pad and sat on the wall to sketch it. She showed me afterwards. It was just the bare branches, nothing else, and she'd drawn the leaves falling down and piling at the root like a little drift. I asked why she'd bothered with the bare bit. She said the leaves were the easy part, everyone wants the leaves.

I'm keeping one. Pressed inside the Bible, the one you never open. Come up on Sunday and I'll show you where.

Love, Maureen