Fine line tattoo of a curling tree with small coloured leaves and the words YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE beneath it, placed on a person's upper back.

Fine line tree with quote on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A small fine line tree with swirling branches, leaf outlines and roots sits on the upper back, with the words YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE in small black lettering below. The linework is black and fairly even, with a few leaves filled with touches of green, purple and red. The tattoo is centred on a plain, softly lit area of skin, with the top of the shoulder and neck blurred at the top of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Back Tree Leaves Root Script Quote

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The apple tree at the edge of Harrowby stood where the forest gave up and the lane began, and you were eight the summer your uncle showed you how to read its rings with a penknife. You remember the smell of cut sap and the way he tapped his boot on the roots and said the old ones grew their branches in curls, so the wind could never get a proper grip.

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Every autumn after that, the village boys climbed it for the fruit and the widow Pell scolded them from her gate. You thought she was cross because she was lonely. In the spring of your fifteenth year she handed you a jar of green ink and a sheaf of cartridge paper and asked you to draw every leaf that had come out on the tree that morning, each one a different colour if you could manage it.

You worked until the lamps were lit. Most leaves you filled with green, one with a bruised purple, and one low on the trunk with the red of a rowan berry you had crushed between your thumb and finger. When you showed her, she turned the sheet over and read the words you had written beneath the roots in your cramped hand, the thing her husband used to say before the sea took him: you only live once, so climb the thing.

The next morning you climbed it. The ink was still under your nails when you reached the highest fork and looked down at the lane, the widow's gate, the smoke from the bakehouse chimney, and you understood the drawing had been a dare and not a lesson. Pell had been waiting for someone to take her seriously about that tree. You took out the penknife and carved your initials high on the bark, and the wood gave way as if it had been waiting for you too.