Black and grey realistic botanical tattoo of a flower bouquet tied with a ribbon, sitting centre on a woman's upper back.

Black and grey flower bouquet on upper back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bouquet of several flower heads, including a large open bloom at the centre, with buds and leaves, is tied at the base with a ribbon. The linework is fine and detailed, with soft grey shading that gives the petals depth and volume. The design is in black and grey ink and sits centrally on the upper back, with the woman's dark lace top and red hair framing it.

Botanical Realism Back Flower Bouquet Ribbon Leaves Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the fire's gone low and I'll not shout this. Every Saturday that winter, old Mr Pardoe climbed the back stairs of the Palais with a bouquet under his arm, tied at the stalk with grey ribbon, and nobody ever saw him buy the flowers. He grew them himself in a cold frame behind the gasworks: peonies, tall blue larkspur, a white lily that opened only after the lamps were lit, and one big bloom at the heart of it all that the botanist at the Corn Exchange swore was a poppy gone to ash.

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He gave the bouquet to Nell Ashby, who swept the cloakroom and never danced, having two left feet and a fiancé in the navy. Nell kept it in a jug of water by the coat hooks, and the petals never browned, not once, not even when the boiler failed in January and the hall went cold enough to see your breath.

Then came the night the band struck up a waltz nobody had heard before, and Mr Pardoe stood at the foot of the stairs with his hat in his hands. 'It's yours to dance with, if you'll have it,' he said. He untied the ribbon, and the flowers came apart in her hands like pencil shavings, every bloom pale and soft at the edges, as though someone had only sketched them and then walked away.

Nell went out onto the floor with the stems in her fist. The lamps dimmed, the couples turned, and by the last bar the boards were littered with grey petals that wouldn't sweep up. Mr Pardoe was never seen at the Palais again, but the ribbon turned up each spring, tied round a jug on the cloakroom sill.