Woman seen from behind with a fine line botanical vine tattoo of leaves and flowers across her back, shoulder and upper arm.

Botanical vine tattoo across a woman's back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a woman seen from behind, with a large botanical design of scrolling vines, leaves and small flowers spreading from the shoulder blade across the back and down the upper arm. The linework is fine and mostly dark grey, with soft shading on the leaves and stems. The warm, sepia-toned lighting and a soft background of bedding and a patterned top keep the focus on the flowing tattoo.

Botanical Fine line Back Shoulder Upper arm Vine Leaves Flower Scroll Tendril Botanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The guard at the Vellin bridge had orders to stop anything that crossed without a stamp, and for three summers he stopped nothing but the vine. It came up from the eastern bank, a green rope with thin curled ends, and every morning it had reached a hand's breadth further over the water than the morning before.

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Old Mirela, who kept the ferry shed on the western side, said it had been planted by a girl who walked out with a sack of seed and no papers. She wanted to bring her mother's garden with her. The customs men pulled it up each week, and each week it grew back at the joins, tendrils first, then leaves folded like letters, then small bell-shaped flowers that opened only after dark.

Teodor, the guard, went out with his shears one evening meaning to cut it clean through. He found a little wooden box caught in the roots, with a pressed leaf inside and a name written on the lid in pencil. The name was his grandmother's. He sat on the stones until the lamps came on, then left the vine alone and wrote in his ledger: nothing carried, nothing declared, nothing to be done.

By autumn the vine had crossed the river. Nobody ever agreed on who let it through, but the bell flowers still open on the bridge rail each night, and the stamp book has a blank page where the guard stopped writing.