Neo-traditional tattoo on a forearm showing a grey California state outline with a bear, orange poppies, green leaves and a Dreams banner.

California poppies and state outline on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey California state outline fills the centre of the design, with a bear, the words CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC, waves and HOLLYWOOD lettering shaded in grey. Bright orange poppies with yellow centres and green leaves frame the top and bottom, and a banner reading Dreams crosses the middle. Bold black outlines and mixed grey and colour shading give the piece a neo-traditional look.

Neo-trad Botanical Lettering Forearm Bear Poppy State outline Banner Dream Wave Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The parcel had been addressed to 14B by mistake, which Marion Tate only worked out after carrying it up fourteen floors on her hip, the lift out again for the third week running. Brown paper, Californian stamps, a customs label half peeled away. Inside was a sheet of grey card cut in the shape of a state, a bear printed faintly in one corner, and a poppy pressed flat between two squares of greaseproof paper, gone the colour of old marmalade.

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She knew the handwriting before she read the name. Her brother Kieran had left for Los Angeles in 1987 with a secondhand guitar, a gym bag and a plan to get into pictures. For two years he sent postcards with orange flowers on the front and never once mentioned the weather, which Marion had always thought was the most Kieran thing about him. Then the postcards stopped. The last one had only said, *Tell Mum the sea's warmer than the Don.*

She rang the number written on the back of the wrapping. A man answered with a radio on behind him and a long, careful vowel. Kieran had died in March, he said, in a rented room near the old studio lot, and his things had been boxed up by a landlord with no interest in sentiment. The box had been sent to the last address on Kieran's list. Marion had stood in the hallway with the phone against her ear and listened to the man describe the waves Kieran used to draw on everything, even napkins.

Later she propped the poppy against the kitchen window, where the evening sun came in low between the blocks and lit the petals from behind. For a minute the car park below was the Pacific, and she let it be.