Back of a woman in a black bra showing a grey shaded botanical tattoo of a blossom branch with pink flowers and green leaves, running from the shoulder blade down the side of the back.

Blossom branch down a woman's back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A branch of blossoming flowers climbs from the shoulder blade down the side of the back, with several open pink petalled flowers, buds and small green leaves. The linework is fine and the shading is soft grey, giving the branch and petals a realistic, drawn appearance. Pale pink and muted green are used sparingly on the blossoms and foliage, and the design is set against the skin's natural tone and a black bra strap.

Botanical Realism Back Cherry blossom Branch Flower Leaves Bud Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The branch had not flowered by the third week of March, and Hanne said the bread would not rise properly until it did. So she sent the boy Iden up to the wild cherry by the mill with a saw and a sack before the bells rang. He came back with a bare grey limb as long as his arm, its twigs knotted and dark, and she wrapped the cut end in wet cloth and stood it in the stone jug by the proving trough.

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Iden believed in flour sacks and ovens, and little else. He worked the dough until his forearms burned while the stove ticked behind him, glancing now and then at the branch, which looked as dead as it had on the hill. 'A tree keeps its own calendar,' Hanne said, not looking up from her scales. 'We only keep ours.' He said it was the sort of thing old women said to end an argument, and she laughed.

Near the hour of the first bake, when the window had gone from black to the colour of slate, he saw a bud on the nearest twig split along its seam. Then another. The petals came out pale, almost white at the edges and faintly pink where they met the green cups at the base, and small leaves unfolded at each joint as if someone were opening a letter. Iden stood with his hands in the dough and did not move. Hanne only tipped the first tray onto the board and said, 'In they go, then,' as though the branch had done nothing more than she asked.

The loaves came out split and gold across the top, and by sunrise the whole lane had come to the door for one. Iden kept a single petal folded in his apron pocket. When the wind came up the hill that morning it took the rest from the jug and carried them down past the mill and over the wet fields, toward whatever bakehouse was waking next.