Colour tattoo of a green cactus with pink hearts in a brown pot labelled MOM, in a bold outlined traditional style on an upper arm.

Cactus in a pot with MOM label on arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A green cactus with three pink heart shapes on its tips sits in a brown pot with a black label reading MOM. Thick black outlines define the cactus, pot and label, with flat fills of green, brown and pink and small black spine marks. The design is centred on pale skin against a dark background.

Traditional Upper arm Cactus Plant Pot Heart Mom Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cactus had outlived two landlords and a cat called Biscuit, and by the time Nell carried it down the stairs of Flat 4 it was wedged so tightly into its pot that the terracotta had cracked and been bound with gaffer tape. Mr Okafor stood in the doorway with his arms folded. He had never once watered it, but he had opinions about how it should be lifted.

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The label had been painted by Nell's dad the summer she turned seven, on a strip of tin he had cut from a biscuit box with his pliers. He had spelt it the way they did in the films he liked, MOM, and she had corrected him, and he had said a cactus did not care about spelling. She had decided that was the most sensible thing an adult had ever said. 'Mind the step,' she told the removal man, who was young, had a van full of other people's sofas and no interest in plants at all. 'It's a prickly pear. It's older than your van.'

It had flowered only once in all those years, in May, with three pink buds on the tips shaped like hearts, as if someone had pinned a note to each arm. Nell photographed them and sent the picture to her dad in Lisbon, who wrote back that it looked like it was waving at the neighbours. She had laughed so hard she had to sit on the stairs.

The removal man set the pot on the windowsill of the new flat, where the light came in from the south and lay across the floorboards in a long gold strip. He went down for the last box without being asked to help with anything else. In the morning there was a fourth bud, small and slightly lopsided, and Nell stood in her socks with her coffee going cold and decided the new flat would do.