Traditional style colour tattoo of a blue-green cactus with a red flower and red buds, in a striped and triangle-patterned pot, on the forearm.

Cactus in a patterned pot

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a blue-green cactus with three pads, a red flower on one side and red buds on top, standing in a purple, orange and turquoise pot decorated with triangles and a diamond motif. Bold black outlines define the shapes, with dark dots and short spines along the cactus, and the colour is flat with soft shading on the cactus pads. The design is centred on a plain background of skin, with the pot forming the base of the composition.

Traditional Forearm Cactus Flower Pot Geometric pattern Triangle Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pot arrives on the 6:40 from Carlisle, wrapped in last Tuesday's Evening Standard, and nobody claims it. You sign for it at the lost property hatch because Mrs Okafor has gone home with a bad hip and the duty manager says someone has to. The label says only "Keep out of the sun, it sulks" in blue biro, and beneath that a small drawing of a cactus with its flower standing up like a raised eyebrow.

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For three weeks it sits on the shelf between a black umbrella with a broken rib and a child's wellington. On Tuesdays you water it from the tap in the staff kettle room, since the label doesn't say how often and you have decided that is a question for a person. The triangles round its middle run orange, yellow and red, and a turquoise diamond sits low on its belly like a brooch. Each morning, when the commuters come in asking after gloves and season tickets, you find yourself turning it so the bright side faces the window.

On the twenty-second day a woman in a green raincoat comes to the hatch with a description: blue, prickly, probably left on the 4:15 from Leeds. You bring it out. She turns the pot over, reads the label, and goes quiet in a way you recognise from people who have just been handed their own handwriting from years ago. "I was meant to post this to my brother," she says. "He's been waiting since 2011 for a cactus I forgot to send."

She tucks it under one arm, flower side out, and walks towards the barriers. Through the glass you watch her stop under the departures board, lift the pot up to the grey light, and tip it a fraction, as if checking it is still thirsty.