Black and grey botanical tattoo of flowers and leaves wrapping around a woman's upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey flowers and leaves on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with light hair lies under a white sheet, showing a large tattoo of open flowers, buds and leaves that runs from the shoulder down the upper arm. The linework is fine and the petals and leaves are built up with soft grey shading and dark accents, giving depth to the design. The tattoo is in black and grey against pale skin, with the soft bedding and muted tones keeping the focus on the arm.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Shoulder Flower Leaves Bud Foliage Blossom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit closer, for the briar at the edge of Hollin Wood doesn't carry its voice far, and the old folk never cared to be overheard by it. Mind the dry moss. Maud Penrose kept the cottage nearest the trees, and it was her wild rose that climbed the north wall, leaves thick as a hand, buds heavy with dew, open blooms pale as milk at the height of summer.

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The winter the miller's boys came through with their billhooks, they cut that rose to the root. Maud said nothing. She only gathered the cut canes and wove them into a crown for her grandson Jack, who was seven and frightened of the dark. He wore it to bed. By morning the thorns had pricked his brow in a line of little red stars, and pushed out through the stems was one open flower, its petals folded over each other like letters nobody had sent.

Nobody in Hollin believed what came after until the bakehouse chimney caught and the whole street blamed the boy. Jack said nothing. Next morning the flower had gone brown at one edge and the miller's eldest was walking about with his hand pressed to his ribs, and he went up the lane to Maud's door with his cap in his fists and told her what he'd done with the axe. Each bloom, Maud used to say, opens for a debt paid, and the wood keeps the count of the rest.

So if you go past Hollin's north wall at dusk, look up. You'll find thirty-odd buds still tight and grey-green. Count them if you like. But when you turn for home, mind that one of them is open, and don't be surprised if the thorn in your own palm has started to itch.