Black and grey botanical tattoo design of dandelion seeds, daffodils, a rose and a sunflower with script lettering, shown on a white background.

Dandelion, daffodils, rose and sunflower with script

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A stacked arrangement of dandelion seed heads, two daffodils, a rose and a sunflower, with a quote in cursive script running between the blooms. The linework is bold and the petals and centres are shaded in greys, with fine stippling in the sunflower centre. The flowers are arranged vertically on a plain white background with the dandelion seeds drifting off to the upper left.

Botanical Lettering Dandelion Daffodil Rose Sunflower Script Quote Seed

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top has more holes than canvas now, and the wind comes through them as if it has paid for a seat. You stand at the flap counting empty benches while Mr Vance argues with the generator man about money that was never going to arrive. Twelve rows, three children, one dog asleep on the third step. The sawdust has gone grey with rain, and the painted board on the lorry still promises The Marvellous Mosaic, which was a lie in Shrewsbury too.

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Your rigging is older than your daughter and you have checked every shackle twice. Ada sews the last sequins back onto your costume with thread from a tin of odd buttons, biting each knot off with her front teeth. She tells you the field behind the lorries has gone to seed, a whole hillside of dandelion clocks, and that the wind is coming up from the west, good for nothing but blowing things away. You say you will be up there in ten minutes. You say it like you believe it.

So you walk out past the caravans and pick one clock, the roundest you can find, and hold it in your fist the way your father used to hold chalk before a turn. You blow once. The seeds lift all at once, a grey smoke going over the hedge toward the car park and the empty road, and you watch them go until your neck aches. Then you climb the ladder with the drum rolling below, and the wire under your feet is cold and perfectly honest.

Halfway across, the tent creaks and the three children look up, and so does the dog. You do not look down. You count your steps the way Ada counts stitches, one, two, the far platform rising out of the dark like a promise you made years ago. Nobody claps for the crossing, and nobody ever does. But when your feet touch the platform you find you are laughing, and a single seed drifts up past the rigging to settle on the wire beside your hand.