Black and grey botanical tattoo of a chrysanthemum, small blossoms and dark leaves on the upper arm, in fine line with soft shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chrysanthemum and blossom sprigs on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large botanical design wraps across the upper arm, centred on a detailed chrysanthemum bloom with curling petals. Smaller open blossoms and slender sprigs rise above it, and dark, shaded leaves trail down the lower edge of the design. The work is rendered in black ink and grey with delicate linework and soft shading, and the design sits against plain skin on a light background.

Botanical Fine line Upper arm Chrysanthemum Flower Blossom Leaves Sprig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit under the tarpaulin, love, and mind the drip, it has a grudge against the left shoulder. Rain on Caddick Market always comes sideways off the river, and it finds the flowers first. My father used to say the chrysanthemum is the only bloom that doesn't mind the wet, because it was bred for cold weather by people who were cold themselves, and it folds its petals the way a careful child folds a letter, one tight curl tucked inside the next.

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That was the week Ruth Pennock came down the aisle in her good coat with nothing in her hands. She stood by the dark-leaved sprigs for a long time, turning a brass key over and over in her palm. She wanted the white blossom from the tall jar, the kind that smells of almonds and never sells before March. I named my price. She told me the key opened a tin box her husband had weighted with bricks and dropped off the Ferry Steps the night he left, and that she had waited eleven winters to learn whether it was worth the trouble of finding. I didn't ask her how she knew where to look.

I wrapped the blossom in yesterday's newspaper, then went to the back bucket and took out the biggest chrysanthemum, the one whose bloom closes like a clenched fist. I laid it on top of the blossom and told her there was no charge. She looked at me as though I'd robbed her, and maybe I had, because the key went into my apron pocket and the flowers went into her arms. The rain kept on. In April a note came through the stall, folded many times, saying the box held nothing but a pair of silver spoons and a letter she would not read aloud. Some of the petals on that bloom were still tight then, and I think of them now, curling a little tighter every time I tell this.