Small fine line black tattoo of two crossed lavender sprigs with leaves, on the inner upper arm.

Crossed lavender sprigs on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small botanical design shows two lavender-style sprigs crossing in an X shape, each with a row of tiny buds and a pair of leaves. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, in black ink only. The design sits centrally on the inner upper arm against plain skin, with a striped sleeve along the right edge of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Lavender Sprig Leaves Bud

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the bundle of lavender wedged behind the sun visor of the hire car, its stems dry and grey-violet, tied with a length of red thread gone pale in the heat. The rental desk in Almería never mentioned flowers, so it must have been Teodor, who sold you the map and then slept in the back seat all the way from Murcia. You unfold the receipt he left tucked under the wiper. In his cramped hand it says: the roads cross at the stone cross, turn left past the well, and don't stop at the blue gate.

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The road runs straight for forty kilometres beside a dry lake bed, where the heat lifts the horizon into a shine that looks like water. You keep the windows down and the radio off. Nothing moves out here except a hawk turning over the scrub and, once, a tractor with no driver, idling at the edge of a field as if it has been waiting for someone to come back for it. The well comes up on the left. The blue gate is shut. You don't stop.

There is no stone cross at the crossroads, only a shrine of bleached plastic flowers and a single lavender bush growing out of an old tyre. You crouch in its shade and cut a sprig with the penknife Teodor left you. Two roads, one bush, a sprig for each direction. You lay your stem over one of his and tie them with the red thread, the knot pulled tight the way he showed you on the dock.

You drive on with the window down. The smell of the lavender follows you along the dust, crossing and recrossing the road behind the car until the flats finally break into hills.