Black and grey engraving-style tattoo on a back, showing a bee, a bird skull, carnations, a heart and berry branches inside dotted geometric lines.

Bee, skull and carnations on a back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large tattoo across the upper back shows a bee at the top, a bird skull in the centre, and carnations above a human heart at the base. Two berry branches curve down either side, and fine dotted lines form a triangular frame behind the motifs. The work is built from fine linework and stippled shading in black and grey, with a clean, symmetrical composition.

Botanical Dotwork Geometric Back Bee Carnation Heart Berry Branches Dotted line Insect Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The second swarm went up out of the hive on Monday and settled in the hawthorn by the lych gate, so I spent the evening under it with Dad's old sheet and a bucket, talking to them the whole time, the way Gran taught us. You will laugh, but they came down for me. Dad said it was luck. I said it was manners.

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Mr Ashdown died on Tuesday. His heart simply stopped at the allotment with a row of runner beans half picked, and Mrs Pryce from chapel came round before breakfast to say the bees must be told before anyone else tells them. So I took a strip of black crepe from the funeral wreath and tied it to every hive, and the carnations from the wreath went into a jam jar on the kitchen sill, because nobody else wanted them.

On Wednesday I found a rook's skull by the back path, the beak still sharp and the eye hollows clean as thimbles. Dad said to keep it, so it sits on the sill beside the jar. He had also left his brass plumb line and a ball of string, and I pinned the string into a triangle on the scullery wall, just to see where the lines would meet. They met at the blackberry canes, which I have decided is a sign of something, though I cannot say what. Mr Ashdown always said a heart was just a pump with ambitions.

Come home at Easter. The bees have not forgiven me yet for the crepe, but one landed on the page this morning while I was writing, walked the length of the sentence as far as the full stop, and then left, as if it had read enough.