Fine line black tattoo of a dandelion releasing seeds across the upper back, with a hand with blue nail polish resting on the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion seeds drifting across a shoulder blade

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A dandelion clock sits at the lower left with its stem trailing down and off the frame, and several seeds drift up and to the right across the skin. The linework is fine and fairly delicate, with soft shading in the seed heads and a faint pinkish wash around the base of the flower. The ink is almost entirely black and grey, and the design is placed across the upper back with a hand resting at the top of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Back Shoulder Dandelion Seed Stem Wind

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had counted the seeds in the clock on the harbour wall since she was six, and every morning her father's boat, the Mary Lowe, went out past the breakwater on the ebb. Seven hundred and twelve, she told him once, and he laughed and said the wind would take the lot before she reached the end.

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The wind that October came from the north-east and kept coming. The fleet stayed tied up for nine days, and the crews mended nets along the quay with cracked, raw hands. Ruth sat on the wall with a dandelion she had pulled from the gap between the stones, blowing softly so the seeds lifted one by one and skated off over the water towards the Scar.

On the tenth morning the Lowe went out alone, because the glass had been rising and her father was impatient. Ruth did not blow on the clock that day. She held it in both palms and watched the flags on the lifeboat house, and when they swung round to the west she stood up and let the wind have what was left.

The other boats came in at dusk. Ruth stayed on the wall until the lamps came on along the quay, watching the last seeds drift out over the grey water. At first light the Lowe rounded the breakwater with her sail half down, and Ruth ran the length of the harbour with her father's old cap in her hands, one seed still caught in its brim.