Coloured Japanese-style dragon tattoo with red cherry blossoms across the upper back, with a small set of symbols to the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragon and cherry blossoms across a back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A grey and black dragon coils across the upper back, with its head at the upper left and its scaled body curling through the centre. Red cherry blossoms with soft red and pink washes surround the dragon, and small dark symbols sit to the right of the design. The shading is soft and layered on the scales, and the red flowers provide the main colour against the greyscale body.

Japanese Back Dragon Cherry blossom Flower Symbol Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, the plum tree you asked about is not dying, whatever Mrs Okonedo says over the fence. It is only sulking because the blossom came early and the frost caught it. Your grandfather planted it the spring after the flood, when the lower lawn was still full of silt and he swore nothing would grow there but nettles. He was stubborn that way. He used to say a garden is an argument you keep having with the weather.

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Under the roots, where the clay turns grey, he buried the old bronze bell from the chapel roof. I never asked him why. Some nights in April I stand by the wall and hear it ring faintly through the soil, though the men from the council say it is only the pipes. The dragon in the pond, the one he carved from a slab of yew and painted green, has been losing scales all winter. I have been touching them up with a fine brush, one by one, the way he showed me, so the coils still look like they are moving when the light goes low.

Last week the petals came down all at once, a red and pink storm across the flagstones. The pond was so full of them it looked as if the dragon had been bathing in fire. I swept nothing. I sat on the bench and let it lie.

Come at Easter if you can. Bring the good secateurs, not the ones you left in the shed last time. The tree will want cutting back, and I want you to be the one to do it, the way he would have wanted. Love, Nan