Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a tree inside a geometric diamond outline with a crescent moon above, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dotwork tree in geometric frame on thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large tree with a full canopy and exposed roots is drawn in fine stippled dotwork, set inside an outlined geometric diamond with a small dot at each point. A solid crescent moon sits above the frame, with a dot below the lower point and small dots at the sides. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on a pale upper thigh, centred and filling most of the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Botanical Thigh Tree Moon Crescent Diamond Geometric shape Dot Root

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The buyers came on Tuesday with a clipboard and a tape measure, and I walked them down past the Bramley rows to the old Egremont tree as if I was showing off a horse. They didn't care about it. The man kept saying 'lovely canopy' and writing down the acreage. I didn't tell him Dad used to sit under it with a flask and a paper bag of sugared plums, counting the windfalls out loud until he lost his place and started again.

I found the frame in the shed this morning, behind the wheelbarrow. You remember it: Granddad's diamond of cut ash, a pin at each point and string strung tight between them. He used it to sight the tree every August, lining the top of the canopy up inside the lines so he could tell whether it had grown. The moon was a thin bright crescent the night we planted it in 1961, and he always said that was why it leaned east.

So I sat in the grass with the frame propped on a crate and drew what he would have drawn. Crescent above, dots at the points, the trunk and roots dragged down through the middle. It took me four evenings and most of a biro. Every leaf is a dot, Tom. Hundreds of them. Sixty-odd years of small decisions.

Last night the wind got up and the windfalls started coming down one at a time, thump, thump, into the long grass. I counted them until I stopped counting and just listened. Come up at the weekend if you can. Bring the frame back with you. I want to see whether it still fits.

Love, Nell