Black and grey botanical tattoo of large open flowers, smaller blossoms and leaves on the upper arm, with muted pink blossoms on the left side.

Botanical flower spray on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A bouquet of large open flowers with stamens, smaller clustered blossoms and broad leaves on a stem, spreading from the upper arm down towards the elbow. The linework is fine and the shading is soft and graduated, giving the petals and leaves volume. Mostly grey ink, with muted pink blossoms along the left edge and warm brown accents in the flower centres.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Flower Blossom Leaves Stem Bouquet Stamen

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crate arrives on the 7.14 with its label half torn away, and you are the only porter on platform two who thinks it smells of wet earth rather than diesel. Mr Ostler's solicitor has paid for it to go north to the herbarium in Edinburgh, and the consignment book has no column for what to do when a box of flowers seems to be waiting for something. You sign for it anyway. Inside, between sheets of tissue, the blooms lie pressed like held breath: white windflowers the size of a child's palm, their gold centres dusted brown, and beside them a spray of lilac gone the colour of weak tea.

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Nobody warned you that the station clock would stall while you turned the plates over, one by one, reading the careful copperplate on each. Ostler drew them in the years before the cutting came through the hills, a single stem to a sheet, every leaf shaded so softly you could believe it was still breathing against the glass. The last plate has no name, only a date and the single word *return*.

The northbound is late, as it always is when someone is waiting for it. You carry the crate to the bench by the water tower and lift out the lilac, and a small white blossom drops onto your sleeve as though it had only been resting. You brush it onto the sill. A woman with a sack of seed potatoes sits down beside you and asks what you are waiting for. You tell her a train, which is true, and that the flowers must be somewhere before the frost, which is also true.

When the engine finally slides in, you lift the crate into the guard's van and step back with empty hands. Somewhere past Carlisle a curator will open the lid and find the windflowers still pale, their stamens still gold. You keep the last plate. It is cool from the bench, and when you hold it up to the lamp the stem seems to lean towards the platform, as though it too hopes to be carried north.