Colour tattoo of a cherry blossom branch with pink and red flowers and dark grey stems on the side of the torso, partly covered by clear plastic wrap.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cherry blossom branch on the side of the torso

Japanese · Other · Mixed · Photo

A dark grey branch curves diagonally across the skin, carrying pink and red cherry blossom flowers with small buds along its length. The linework is bold and the petals are shaded in red and pink with lighter highlights, with black and grey used for the stems. The branch sits against a black waistband, and a clear plastic dressing covers part of the fresh tattoo at the bottom of the frame.

Japanese Botanical Other Cherry blossom Branch Flower Petal Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last cherry tree in Sallowgate stood in the yard behind the fish market, and nobody had ever planted it. Old Mrs Pell swept its fallen petals every morning before the gulls woke. She said the tree had come up through the cobbles the winter the bridge fell down, which was a lie, because the bridge had never fallen. But it was the kind of lie people kept repeating because it sounded like something.

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One night in April a lamplighter's boy named Tobiah Ree came along the wall with a torch and a bottle of paraffin, meaning to burn the tree for the council, who wanted the yard for a car park. He found the branches already glowing from underneath, pink in the dark, though there was no lamp anywhere. The petals lifted in the wind and settled on the shoulders of his coat. He stood there a long time. Then he set the bottle down on the wall and walked home without it.

Next morning the council man came with a clipboard and found Mrs Pell on her knees with a dustpan. He asked why the tree was still standing. She said it was waiting for someone to come back for it. He laughed, until he saw the small branch she was holding, one she had cut to keep, and he stopped laughing and went away to write a different report.

The car park was never built. Tobiah still sends the market a jar of blossom jam each spring, and the label, in his careful hand, says only: for the tree, and for the bridge that did not fall.