Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a saguaro cactus above a succulent on the upper arm, shown in an outdoor setting.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cactus and succulent on the upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A saguaro cactus with two raised arms stands above a leafy succulent at its base, drawn in black linework with stippled dot shading on the cactus body. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and sits on the outer upper arm. The image is a close, slightly angled photo with a blurred street background and a strip of red hair at the top edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The timetable on the wall still says the 6.40 stops at Ocotillo Halt, though nothing has stopped here since the company pulled up the sidings and left the cattle grid to rust. I keep the platform swept anyway. Nobody on the books would notice if I didn't, which is exactly why I do it.

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Every March a freight driver leaves a parcel on the bench for me, wrapped in newspaper from a town I have never visited. Inside is a saguaro pup no taller than my thumb, its skin a dull green that goes grey where the light hits. He never says who sends them. I plant each one in a biscuit tin behind the signal box, beside the agave rosettes my mother set out the year she left on the eastbound.

This spring one of the pups had grown an arm. I found it lying across the rails, snapped off by wind or a careless boot, and I stood there a long while working out whether a cactus could be late. Then I carried it back to the bench and tied a luggage tag to its base in my best capitals: PASSENGER, PLATFORM ONE, TO BE COLLECTED.

In the morning the tag was gone and the bench was bare. The 6.40 came in at half past seven, two carriages long and nobody aboard, and the rail was warm under my palm where someone had stepped down and walked off into the scrub.

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