Colour tattoo of a cherry blossom branch with pink flowers and green leaves, spanning the shoulder and upper arm of a person wearing a black top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cherry blossom branch across a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A branch of cherry blossom runs diagonally across the shoulder and upper arm, with pink and red five-petal flowers, closed buds and small green leaves. The grey branch and stems are shaded with soft tonal gradients, while the blossoms use blended pinks and reds with subtle highlights. The design is shown in a close, slightly angled view against a plain wall and a dark top.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Cherry blossom Branch Flower Petal Bud Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You reach Hollin Farm at six, the van smelling of diesel and wet newspaper, and find the orchard gate already open. Mrs Dorothy Pask is waiting by the old cherry tree at the stile, a cardigan buttoned wrong over her good blouse. The frost took most of the blossom in April, she says, but this one branch held on, and she wants it on the arch by eleven. You have secateurs, a bucket of water and no time to argue.

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You cut it low where the bark is grey and mossed, the way she shows you, pointing with a finger that trembles only when she is not looking at it. The flowers have five petals the colour of the inside of a shell, and some have already dropped onto her shoes. She tells you the tree went in the spring her husband Ray sailed for Mombasa, and that he came home only after the blossom was over. Every April since, she has counted the buds on it like letters, one for each week he was gone.

At the barn the groom's brother is swearing at a warped timber arch. You wire the branch to it with green garden ties, bending it so the flowers face the lane, and you leave one tight bud near the top because she insists. The bride comes out in muddy boots, sees the branch, and goes quiet in a way that makes you look down at your own boots.

When you leave at noon, the closed bud is still shut at the top of the arch. Dorothy stands beneath it with one hand flat against the trunk you left behind, as if it were still warm, and you drive out with the empty bucket rattling in the back.