Black fine line tattoo of two crossed botanical twigs with small buds on the upper arm, shown in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crossed twig branches on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a bare arm with a tattoo of two thin twigs crossed in a V shape, each with small branching offshoots and tiny buds. The linework is fine and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The tattoo sits across the centre of the frame against a soft grey background, with a blurred garment on the right.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Twig Branch Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band at the Winter Palais had got as far as the third waltz when Denny Pike asked whether I still remembered my dad's hedge trick. I said I'd forgotten. He said that was a lie, since I'd told him about it on the bus from Ashby, and nobody tells a lad about crossed sticks unless she's already decided something about him.

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After the last dance he walked me to the cloakroom, where Mrs Harrop was sorting coats into rows like a bank clerk. Denny pulled two hazel twigs from his jacket, tied together with a loop of green wool. The buds on them were tight and grey, not yet catkins. "Cross them when we part," he said, "and we'll be back in the same place by spring." I told him that was the sort of thing a man says to a girl so he can walk her home in the rain without paying for a taxi. He laughed, and it was the first honest thing he'd done all night.

Dad always said the crossing was a promise with a hinge in it. You could open it whenever you liked, but you had to choose to close it again. I stood under the bare bulb and pressed the twigs together, feeling the little knots of the buds against my thumb, and I didn't say anything clever.

Denny went out on the boats in March. The letter came in April with nothing in it but a pressed celandine. The twigs are in a biscuit tin on my wardrobe now, and in May the buds opened into leaves no bigger than fingernails, pale as the paper I wrapped them in. I still haven't decided whether that was the luck or just the season.