Neo-traditional botanical tattoo of a bouquet of pink and purple flowers and green leaves, tied with twine, on the forearm.

Floral bouquet on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bouquet of flowers tied at the stem with a yellow twine runs up the forearm, including a large peony-like bloom, sweet pea style petals and smaller star-shaped flowers. The flowers are filled with soft pinks, mauves and purples, while the leaves are shaded in muted greens. Black outlines define the petals and leaves, and the bouquet tapers from a wide head at the top to a narrow stem near the wrist.

Botanical Neo-trad Forearm Bouquet Flower Peony Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bouquet rode in the passenger footwell, stems wrapped in damp newspaper and bound with a loop of yellow twine, because Mo had said the peonies would sulk in the back. Forty miles of grey tarmac lay between Saltpan Junction and the chapel at Ruin Wells, and the van's air con had given up somewhere past the mesa. I kept one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the bouquet's head, the way you'd steady a kid asleep in a car seat.

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A dust wall rolled in from the east around the twelfth mile. I pulled onto the verge, shut the windows and sat with the wipers going, watching the sky turn the colour of weak tea. When it passed, the road was smothered in pale sand and a single sign leaned over, pointing at nothing. Out of habit I checked the petals. The sweet peas had survived, creased but whole, and the little star flowers had lost none of their pink.

Mo had taken the order over the phone in March, from a widower who wanted the bouquet his late wife carried up the aisle in 1978, down to the colours. Pale peony, mauve pansies, the sweet peas she grew along the fence. I had hunted for those sweet peas across three counties and found only a sprig in a stranger's greenhouse, which I paid for in cash and never mentioned to Mo.

The chapel doors were propped open when I got there. I carried the flowers in head first, the twine still knotted, and set them in a tin bucket of water at the front. The widower touched one petal with a knuckle and said nothing at all, which was exactly right.