Colour tattoo of red cherry blossom branches wrapping over a man's shoulder and upper arm, in a Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cherry blossom branches on shoulder and upper arm

Japanese · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows slender dark branches with red five-petalled cherry blossom flowers, spreading from the shoulder down the outer upper arm. The linework is fine and the flowers are shaded with red and orange tones, with darker brown shading on the branches. The subject is cropped at the shoulder and neck against a dark grey vest, so the tattoo fills most of the frame.

Japanese Shoulder Upper arm Cherry blossom Blossom Branches Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cherry at the top of Hollin Lane had split in the February gale, and Dora Makepeace wanted it down before the sap rose. Her brother Alf said leave it, it would flower regardless, but she had pruned that orchard since she was eleven and knew a wound that would not close when she saw one. She carried the bow saw up the ladder with the wind pulling at her coat and the mist still lying in the furrows below.

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Halfway up she found the grafting knife wrapped in oilcloth in the fork of the trunk, where her grandfather had left it in 1952 with a note tacked beneath: Cut toward the light. The blade was still keen. She worked the split limb free, and under the bark the wood was the colour of weak tea, darkest at the joints where the branches forked, while the buds along the good side were already swelling red as pinpricks of sealing wax.

Alf came out with two mugs and stood under the tree, saying nothing for once. A petal of last year's blossom, dry as paper, came loose in the draught and drifted across the yard toward the gate, where the postman was reading a letter aloud to nobody. Dora took his mug, drank, and handed it back.

They took a cutting from the healthy side, bound it in damp moss, and tied it to the gatepost with red wool. Dora wrote the date on the tag in capitals so whoever climbed the ladder next would know who had done the cutting.