Healed tattoo across a woman's upper back showing a shaded dandelion, drifting seeds turning into black birds, and the script quote "Inhale the future, exhale the past".

Dandelion seeds becoming birds with script on back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A shaded black and grey dandelion with a long stem sits on the left of the upper back, with seeds drifting diagonally to the right and turning into silhouetted birds. Below, the cursive script "Inhale the future, exhale the past" is written in dark ink, with some lines appearing reddish. The photo is taken from behind with soft indoor lighting, and the tattoo fills the centre of the frame.

Botanical Lettering Back Dandelion Seed Bird Script Quote Silhouette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways over the fruit stalls since before dawn, and you keep your hood up while you work the tarpaulin loose from the pole. Mrs Okonedo at the next pitch shouts that the cherries will be ruined, and you shout back that nothing is ruined that has already been sold. Across the square the clock on the church says twenty past six, which means the bus to Harrowgate has gone without you again.

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A boy from the wool stall hands you a dandelion clock he has pulled from the gutter, its seeds clumped and dripping. You tell him it will not survive the wet, and he tells you that is not what it is for. You take it anyway. When you blow, the seeds fly apart in the grey air, and for a moment they look like a handful of thrown ash, then like something else, small dark shapes lifting off toward the cathedral roof. You stand there longer than you mean to, rain running off your nose, until Mrs Okonedo calls your name twice.

That evening you sit on the back step with a cup of tea gone cold and read the chalk note the boy left on your crate. It says only, in careful capitals, BREATHE IN WHAT COMES. You laugh until you cough, then you pick up the pencil and write the rest underneath, because the sentence is missing its other half and you know exactly where it belongs.