Colour tattoo of three pink butterflies and blue forget-me-not flowers with black swirl lines and dots on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Butterflies and forget-me-nots on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A vertical arrangement of three pink butterflies and five small blue five-petalled flowers sits on the inner forearm, linked by thin black swirling lines and dotted trails. The butterflies have black outlines with pink wing fills and darker pink spotting, while the flowers have yellow centres and softer shading. The tattoo runs up from the wrist, with a silver heart-link bracelet visible at the bottom edge of the frame.

Forearm Butterfly Flower Forget-me-not Swirl Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The Ebony has been moored below the lock at Hanwell for nine days now, and the lock-keeper says we cannot go further until the water comes back up. I have spent most of them on the towpath, where the forget-me-nots grow. They come up in the cracks along the wall in little blue crowds, five petals each, with yellow eyes as if someone had pressed a pin into them. Father always said they were the flowers of people who would not be forgotten, and I used to think that was daft.

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Yesterday the butterflies came. Dozens of them, the pink sort with spots on their wings, lifting off the nettles every time the engine coughed. I counted three on one stem and tried to sketch them in the back of the logbook, but my lines went wobbly and they looked like moths left out in the rain. You would have laughed. I kept the page anyway.

Mrs Dacre came down from the lock cottage with a flask this morning and asked whether I was the one who had been drawing the wall. I said I was only passing the time. She said the wall had been painted over twice since her mother's day and the flowers came back every spring regardless, so she had given up pulling them. I think she meant it kindly.

So I am staying a few more days. If the water rises, I will come down to you by the first of the month. If it does not, I will send you a pressed one in this envelope, though I expect it will be flat as a coin by the time you read this.

Your loving sister, Mae