Black blossom branch tattoo with the script 'until we meet again' on the side of the ribs, with a small pink lip mark below.

Blossom branch and 'until we meet again' on ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A black branch with several blossoms arcs across the side of the torso, with the words 'until we meet again' written in cursive script beneath it. A small pink lip mark sits below the lettering, adding the only colour to the design. The linework is solid and bold, and the composition follows the curve of the body with a red garment visible at the upper left.

Botanical Lettering Ribs Branch Blossom Flower Script Quote Lip

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are halfway along the lane under Harrow Wood when the post cart rattles past without stopping, so you hold your letter up to the plum tree by the stile and tell it the news anyway. The blossom came out overnight, all at once, the way Tom said it would when he went. The branches reach over the hedge like long, careless arms, and the pale petals catch in your hair. You have read the envelope so often that its corners have gone soft as cloth. Mrs Pargeter at the shop said the ink would never survive the sea. She was right about the ink.

Keep reading

Tom left in March with a kitbag, a borrowed razor and a promise to be home before the fruit set. Fruit has set twice since. You kept the lamp lit in the window anyway and walked to the stile each Sunday, and each Sunday you pressed your mouth to a sheet of paper and sent it south with the kiss still on it, a small pink print where a seal might have gone. He wrote back that those little marks were the only colour he saw for months, and that he kept one folded in his breast pocket against the dust.

This letter is different. The postmark is three weeks old, and the hand is steadier than his used to be. He is on the Thursday train. He will walk up from the station and not stop at the Crown. You read it twice, then a third time, standing in the lane while a wood pigeon argues with itself in the branches.

You fold it along its old creases and tuck it back into your apron. Then you lean against the stile and look up at the blossom, which is not finished yet, and which will drop its petals on the lane whether or not anyone is there to see. One petal drifts down and settles on the pink print of your mouth on the envelope, and you leave it there.