Purple cornflower tattoo with angular faceted petals and dark stems, placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cornflower sprig on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A sprig of three purple cornflower heads and one unopened bud sits on a stem with dark green leaves, shown on the side of a torso. The petals are built from sharp, angular facets in several shades of violet, with white and orange highlights at the centres. The flowers dominate the composition, and the stems taper down the skin towards the lower edge of the frame.

Botanical Geometric Ribs Flower Bud Stem Leaf Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's slick with rain, and don't let the barrow man tell you the blue ones cost more. Cornflowers are always cheap, that's the trick of them. My grandfather sold them off a tin tray under the arch at Hollin Market for forty years, and he never once charged more than a penny a sprig, rain or shine.

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A girl came one wet October morning with a single copper in her glove. She wanted a flower that wouldn't wilt before she got it home, and he handed her one with petals that looked cut from paper. Violet at the edges, a deeper purple where the shadow sat, and a white flash at the heart like a match struck in a cellar. Wet cornflowers look like that, he told her, as if someone had taken shears to the sky and left the corners sharp.

A man in a grey coat came along after her, asking for three heads and one bud. He wanted the bud left closed. The grandfather raised an eyebrow, and the man said he'd sooner keep something that hadn't decided yet. So the old fellow wrapped the stems in brown paper, dark green leaves poking out at the top, and the man tucked the parcel under his arm and walked off into the drizzle.

The girl watched him go until the tin tray filled with rainwater and the blue went dark again. Then she counted her copper, which was still warm, and bought a sprig for herself.