Black and grey botanical tattoo of flowers, a bud and leaves within a dotted diamond outline, on the inner upper arm.

Black and grey flowers in a dotted diamond on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of three flowers, a closed bud and several leaves sits inside a fine dotted diamond outline. The flowers and leaves are built from dense etched hatching and stippled linework, giving soft tonal shading. The design is centred on the inner upper arm against a plain pale background.

Botanical Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Flower Leaves Leaf Bud Dot Diamond Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The supply boat is late again, and the wind has already stripped the gardenia at the north wall of its last petals. You stand on the gallery with the glass cold under your palm and count what survived the gale: three flowers, if you are generous, and one closed bud that refuses to open for anyone. Your sister planted them the spring before she left for the mainland, pressing each cutting into a crack in the rock with a dessert spoon, because the soil had come over in sacks and was never going to hold. They grew anyway, out of spite, she said.

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Every evening you climb to light the lamp, and every evening you take the stub of pencil from your breast pocket and mark the sky over the sound. The chart on the wall below has a dotted diamond you drew years ago, four points where the rocks lie under the tide, and you have never told anyone why it looks like a jewel box. Tonight the bud has split along one seam, pale and papery, and the orchid beside it has turned its face towards the lamp as if it knows the routine better than you do.

The relief boat rounds the point at dusk with a sack of mail and a letter in your sister's handwriting. She says the mainland gardens are full of roses that have never been battered by weather, and that she misses the foghorn more than she expected. She asks whether the gardenia has survived. You write back before the lamp needs trimming, the words coming easily for once: tell her two of them are still standing, and the third is thinking about it.