Blue and purple dandelion with drifting seeds and a black typewriter-style quote, tattooed on a forearm.

Dandelion seeds and quote on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A dandelion with blue and purple shading sits at the left, with its seeds drifting off to the right as small dark stems with coloured tips. A black typewriter-style quote runs across the skin in several lines beneath the seeds. The linework is clean, the dandelion uses soft shading, and the blue and purple tones contrast with the black text.

Botanical Lettering Forearm Dandelion Seed Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan Hobbs kept a small brass clock in her apron pocket, the way other women kept string or peppermints, and every June she walked the long meadow below Stanmore Hill to see how many seeds were ready to go. Nobody in Coldharbour asked her why. They knew she had counted the seeds of every dandelion since the year the mill burned, and they knew the number never came out even.

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The old people said a dandelion clock held every life a person might have lived had the wind blown them another way. Nan did not believe it, but she believed the ache. Some nights, lying in bed, she could feel the weight of a full head of seeds she had never been carrying, pressing down through her shoulders and into the floorboards, and she would get up and sit by the window until it eased.

One morning a boy called Eli Marsh came up the path with a jam jar and asked if he could buy one. He had no money, so she traded him a stem for a clean pair of socks from her line. He held the clock up to his mouth and blew hard. The seeds rose in a rush, caught the sea breeze off the cliffs, and scattered over the harbour roofs like sparks from a bonfire.

Nan watched them go and counted under her breath, the way she always did. At the end she reached the same number as before, one short. A single seed had snagged on the wool of her sleeve, and she sat down on the warm grass and let it sit there a while. Then she unpicked it, held it flat on her palm, and opened her hand to the wind.