Neo-trad style tattoo of a blue matryoshka doll with paisley and swirling floral ornament, placed on the calf.

Blue matryoshka doll on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A matryoshka doll with a closed-eyed, rosy-cheeked face and a decorative headscarf fills the calf. Bold black outlines define the doll, with stippled and swirling paisley and floral patterns in blue, pale turquoise and beige. Soft blue shading across the doll gives it a gently dimensional look against plain skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nadia,

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The doll came on the Tuesday goods train, packed in a shawl that still smelled of your mother's kitchen, and I have not been able to set her down since. She is the blue one you described from the market in Leeds, with the headscarf worked in paisley swirls and her eyes shut as though she is listening to something very far off. Mr Pryce at the station swore she had been waiting on the platform since Easter.

Her colours are the colours of the river in February, pale turquoise going to deep ink at the hem, with beige leaves curling up her skirt like frost on a window. I have been counting the petals on her scarf. There are forty-one before I lose my place and start again.

Then, on Thursday, I did what you always did and took her apart. Inside the first was a second, then a third, down to a smallest doll no bigger than my thumbnail, and inside that one, rolled tight as a cigarette paper, was a note in your handwriting. It said only: Open the window when the 4:15 goes past. Tell her I was listening.

I opened the window. The train went by, the cups rattled on the dresser, and the little doll rocked on the sill in the draught, eyes still closed. I think you were right, love. She heard every word.

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