Grey and pink cherry blossom branch tattoo running down the outer thigh and leg of a person lying on a black tattoo bed.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cherry blossom branch down a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A branch of cherry blossom runs from the upper thigh down the outer side of the leg, with grey stems and pink petals in clusters. The shading on the branches is soft and grey, while the blossoms carry the only colour, giving a delicate, layered look. The person wears white lace shorts and lies on a black plastic-covered bed, with the tattooed leg taking up most of the frame.

Botanical Thigh Cherry blossom Branch Blossom Petal Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost came early to Harrowmere that year, and the old cherry in the courtyard of Queen Ilse's palace had not yet decided whether to bloom. I was sent up its trunk at dawn with a bone-handled saw and a cloth bag, because the steward wanted one branch for the banquet hall before the cold took the rest.

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My grandmother had grafted that tree from a cutting carried over the mountains by a dyer's wife, and she taught me that a branch must never be taken from the south side, where the sap runs strongest. I took it from the south side anyway. The wood was grey with age and so thin at its tip that the first petals hung from it like wet paper, pink as the inside of a shell.

The steward wanted the branch for the hall. I wanted it for the almshouse across the millrace, where a boy named Piet had been coughing since midwinter and asked each morning whether the trees were out yet. I wrapped the cutting in damp moss and rowed it over before the bells rang the first hour, the grey water sliding under the oars and the stems knocking softly against the boards.

Piet did not wake for the bells, but the petals opened in the warm air of the ward, one by one, while the nurse hummed over her basin. When the steward came at noon, red-faced, to ask where his branch had gone, I pointed to the bed. The boy was asleep with a blossom caught in his fist, and the hall would have to make do with paper.