Black linework tattoo of a flowering cactus and two roses with leaves across a thigh, in a botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cactus and roses on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline tattoo of a tall cactus in bloom and two roses with leaves covers the outer thigh, with the cactus spines drawn as small strokes. The linework is bold and even, with little or no shading, so the design relies on the outlines and open skin for its form. The image is in black and grey and is framed close, with dark clothing visible at the top edge.

Botanical Thigh Cactus Rose Flower Leaves Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the cactus came through the post yesterday wrapped in four sheets of the Gazette, and the postmaster swore at it for pricking his thumb through the brown paper. It is the tall sort, Uncle Tom says, the sort that takes a hundred years to bloom once and then does it in a single night, white as a bedsheet. I have put it on the sill where the coal dust does not reach, though the whole row is black by Thursday regardless.

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The roses came from Mrs Hale's garden before she moved to Penzance. She gave me three cuttings in a jam jar and told me roses need more lime than sense, which I have found to be true. Two of them took. The third sulks by the pit gate where the wind comes off the slag heaps, and I have stopped apologising to it.

Your father sent word from the Sonora works that the night shift has been on short time since March. He does not say so in his letters, but he draws the spines in the margin of every page, little strokes like the prick of a needle, and I know what he means by them. Count them, he writes. Count them and tell me how many are left.

I counted this morning. Forty-one on the tallest arm, and the bloom is still open. Come home when the shaft closes for the summer and bring the good scissors. We will cut the roses for the chapel and put the cactus in the window where the whole lane can see it flower.

Yours in haste, Nell