Fine line black dandelion seed head with drifting seeds tattooed on the inner forearm, beside a silver watch.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds blowing across a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A dandelion seed head with a long, thin stem sits on the inner forearm, with several seeds drifting off to the right as if carried by wind. The linework is delicate and fine, with soft shading in the seed clocks and small dark dots for the seeds. The design is in black or dark brown ink on pale skin, with a silver metal watch strap at the upper right of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Dandelion Seed head Seed Wind Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nadia had been told not to pick the dandelions on the car park verge, because Mr Okafor from flat 40 counted them as if they belonged to him. But the seed heads had gone silver overnight, and the wind coming off the ring road kept lifting them loose before anyone could make a wish. She stood on the eleventh-floor walkway with a fistful of stalks, watching the fluff lift and turn over the railings.

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Her gran used to say you had to blow with your whole breath and mean it. Nadia had never managed to mean anything on purpose. Her mum was on the late shift at the care home, and the flat was quiet except for the lift grinding somewhere below. She tried to follow the seeds as they went, one, two, five, then too many to track past the bins and the bus shelter.

Mr Okafor came up the stairs with his shopping bags, saw the stalks in her hand, and didn't shout. He leaned on the railing beside her, breathing hard, and said the old men on the estate used to call the heads clocks, because you could tell the time by how many puffs it took to clear one. Nadia tried it. Puff, puff, puff, nine times, until the head was bald. He laughed and said it was gone eight and she was late for her tea.

She kept the last head whole and carried it inside in her cardigan pocket. In the morning it was still there, bent and fragile, its seeds packed tight as if they had decided to wait for a better wind. She opened the window onto the walkway, held the stalk between two fingers, and waited for the gusts off the ring road to find her.