Colourful botanical floral tattoo covering a woman's back and side, with a blue swallow on the shoulder.

Floral back piece with swallow

Botanical · Back · Colour · Photo

A large floral tattoo covers much of the back and side, with white, yellow, pink, purple and turquoise blooms among green leaves and stems. The petals and leaves are shaded softly to give a realistic, painterly effect, and a small blue and red swallow sits on the left shoulder. Small cursive script appears near the lower back, and the photograph is taken from behind with a hand visible on the right side.

Botanical Realism Back Shoulder Flower Floral Blossom Leaves Swallow Bird Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ilse, The guard at Brennhof made me open the tin twice, once for the seeds and once for the pressed flowers, and he held each petal up to the window as if it might be a message. I told him they were only forget-me-nots from the ditch by your mother's gate. He did not smile. He wrote something in his ledger and handed the tin back with the lid bent.

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The swallows were already working the telegraph wire above the customs hut. Four of them, dipping under the barrier arm and back, as though nobody had ever told them there was a line on the map. I watched them for the whole hour the queue crawled. The one on the end had a red throat and a blue back so bright it looked wet. It kept landing on the wire, lifting off to feed over the lorries, then coming back to the same stretch of wire, as if it had been given a fixed address.

I have the seeds in my coat now, sewn into the lining where your grandmother kept the rent money in 1947. Tell Matthias the blue poppy is in there, the one he swore would never take in our soil. I wrote the Latin on the tin myself so no one could read the price. Quae manent, it says. What remains. Your grandmother would have laughed at me for choosing something so grand.

I will be at the lower field by Thursday. Dig the bed by the wall where the sun comes first. If the swallows come back before I do, let them have the shed roof. They always knew the way better than we did.