Black and grey botanical tattoo of hibiscus, plumeria and daisy-style flowers with leaves on the upper arm, above a curved black band.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral crown tattoo on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a floral crown sits on the outer upper arm, made up of hibiscus, plumeria and a large daisy-like bloom with leaves curving down either side. The flowers are outlined in bold black linework with fine hatching and stippled shading for depth. A curved black band sits beneath the flowers, and the photo shows a person in light blue jeans and a dark top against a plain white backdrop.

Botanical Upper arm Flower Hibiscus Plumeria Daisy Leaves Band

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pass would shut at the first snow, so we had to finish the crowns by Thursday or wait a whole year for the saint's day to come round again. My aunt Ioana had no patience for waiting. She set me on an upturned crate in the cold room with a sack of hibiscus that a lorry driver had carried up from the lower valleys, their petals already bruised at the edges, and told me the flowers would forgive us nothing.

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The plumeria were the hardest. Their petals were thick as candle wax and split if you pressed them, so I learned to hold each bloom by its stem and twist the wire underneath while my fingers were still warm from the stove. The daisies we cut the size of saucers. The leaves came from the broad plants in the greenhouse at the old mill, and Ioana bent each one at the edges so it would hang like a curtain beside the ears. Last of all came the band, a strip of plaited goat hair dyed the colour of wet slate, which had to sit just above the brow and hold the whole thing steady in a wind.

The snow came on Wednesday night, earlier than the shepherds had promised. Ioana shouldered the crate and I carried the band, and we walked the pass in the grey half-light with the crowns wrapped in sheets. At the cairn near the top she unwrapped the largest one and set it on the stones without a word. The wind pulled at the leaves until they rattled like paper, and she stood there so long I thought she had forgotten me.

When we started down, I looked back once. The crown sat on the cairn with its flowers turned up to the sky, and the one daisy that had come loose in the wrapping was rolling slowly across the snow, still facing the way we had come.