Colour tattoo of a blue and green chameleon curled around a branch with a spiral tail, on the side of a ribcage.

Chameleon on a branch on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A chameleon with a curled spiral tail grips a brown branch, with its head turned to the right and a large orange eye. The body shows blue, green and pink tones with textured scale shading and dark blue-black markings along the back. A soft pink wash sits behind the animal and branch, and the tattoo is set on the side of the ribs beside a purple top and denim waistband.

Realism Ribs Lizard Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the one who lets the tomatoes go to seed, which is how the chameleon arrives. It hangs from the bean canes at the bottom of Mrs Okonedo's allotment in Bristol, a green-gold thing the size of your hand, and it changes its mind about colour the way other people change their minds about lunch. Blue when the sun touches the shed, then a sullen mottled grey when the wind swings round, then a sudden bright rose when it climbs onto the old elm branch you dragged in last spring for the runner beans to climb.

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Mrs Okonedo says it came with a crate of pelargoniums from a man in Plymouth who sold her nothing else, and that it will leave when it is ready. She says a lot of things like that. She feeds it crickets from a tub she keeps under the potting bench and calls it Tuesday, because that is when it first appeared, and she says it watches the gate the way a clerk watches a clock.

You bring the spare bamboo cane round on Thursday and find the chameleon has gone up to the top of the spiral curl of the branch, tail coiled tight as a watch spring, one eye turned to you and one eye turned to the sky. You stand very still, the way she taught you. Slowly, the blue floods back into its flank, the pink blooming behind it like a lamp switched on in a far room.

When the gate goes on Friday there is only the branch, bare and brown, and a faint pale ring on the bark where a tail once rested. Mrs Okonedo pours you tea from the flask and says nothing, which for her is an answer.