Black bare tree with spreading branches and roots tattooed on the inner wrist and forearm, in a botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bare tree with roots on a wrist

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bare tree with a thick trunk, branching crown and spreading roots is tattooed on the inner wrist. The tree is drawn in solid black ink with fine, tapering branches and twig-like linework. The design is centred on pale skin with a plain background, and the roots sit just above the hand.

Botanical Forearm Tree Branches Root

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

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The ash outside Ward 7 has gone the way you said it would, all wire and no leaves, and every night at ten past three I stand at the lift lobby and count its branches against the car park lights. Forty-one on the main limb. I checked twice because the first time I miscounted and it felt like a small failure. The porters' hut has a kettle that works if you hold the switch down, and Ruth from days left a tin of shortbread on the side with a note saying "for whoever is still here", which I have decided is me.

Mr Okafor in bay four asked me last night whether trees know it's winter. I said I didn't think so, and he said good, then they won't be frightened. He's ninety-one and talks about his allotment as though he'll be back at it by Easter. I didn't have the heart to tell him the roots are the part that keeps going when everything above ground stops. I think that's what you meant, though you never said it that plainly.

On the way back from the mortuary corridor at half four the sky over the multistorey turned the colour of weak tea, and the branches stood up black and fine against it like something drawn in one unhurried pass. I stopped and looked for longer than I should have. The night sister put her head round the door and asked if I was all right, and I said yes, just counting.

I'll post this from the ward office tomorrow so the stamp is at least from somewhere with a view. Write back and tell me what the oak in your new garden is doing. Tell me whether it has started to bud yet.

Love, Tom