Fine line black tattoo of a vertical sprig with small side branches on the ribs, worn beneath a dark grey loose top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fine line sprig tattoo on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the side of a torso with a small, thin black tattoo of a vertical sprig, its stem with short angled branches, running up the ribs. A tiny single mark sits further to the right. The linework is delicate and even, the ink is solid black on pale skin, and the subject is framed close against a dark grey, slit garment.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Sprig Stem Branch Plant Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last of the Discovery apples were coming down off the north wall when my uncle handed me the secateurs and said the damson needed a cutting taken before the wasps got fat on it. I went down the row with a bucket and a bad temper. He wanted one shoot of this year's wood, straight as a pencil, with its side branches still short and angled back toward the tip, the way bracken leans up a bank. Most of what I cut was too thick or too soft, and the rest had already browned at the joints.

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Near the end of the row I found it, a single green stem no longer than my forearm, lifting its little branches like someone trying to see over a wall. I cut it low, below a bud, and wrapped the base in a wet sheet of old newspaper. Uncle Ray took it from me without looking and said it would be fine, which was what he said about everything he couldn't fix.

He stood it in a jam jar on the packing shed windowsill and we forgot about it. By October the leaves had yellowed and dropped, and the stem had gone the colour of old string. Ray picked it up, bent it, and it snapped clean with a sound like a twig under a boot. 'Wrong time,' he said. 'You want the wood quieter than that.' He tossed it on the bonfire pile.

I kept one short length from the bottom, the piece with the knife nick still bright on it, and folded it into an envelope with a seed packet and a note in his handwriting. Some years I still find it tucked in the back of my diary, dry as a biscuit, the little branches still angled toward the tip.