Black and grey fine line botanical tattoo of flowers and leaves curving along the ribs, with a hand with pale nails resting above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral sprig tattoo on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A curved sprig of flowers and leaves runs across the side of the torso, with two open blooms, buds and fine stems. The linework is thin and dark, with soft grey shading in the petals and leaves. The tattoo is framed by a hand with pale, nude nails at the top of the image and a soft, neutral background.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Flower Leaves Branch Bud Floral Sprig

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mared Lowther had walked the lane to the pit head every morning for eleven years and had never once looked at the hedges. Today she stopped at the rectory gate because a briar had come through the railings in the night, two open roses and a spray of buds caught on the wire. The rector's wife stood over it holding a pair of shears she plainly did not want to use.

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"They'll only drop by Saturday," Mrs Pryce said. "Nobody in this village has time to look at a wild rose."

Mared took the shears, cut the stem clean and asked for a jam jar of water. She carried it home past the winding house and the chapel with its cracked clock, and set it on the kitchen table beside her husband's boots. Dai came in black to the eyes, coughing, and sat down heavily. He saw the jar before he saw her.

Over the next week she drew it. She had no paper to spare, so she used the backs of the colliery pay slips, pencil first and then ink from the bottle the schoolmaster had left for the register. She drew the curve the stem made as it leaned towards the window, the small leaves that folded like cupped hands, and the bud that had not yet decided whether to open. Each sketch was finer than the last, until she could make a petal from a single hair-thin line.

On the Friday, Dai came up the lane on his own feet, grey with dust, and Mared met him at the gate with the drawing folded in her apron. He read it the way he read the wage notices, slowly, then turned it upside down and laughed. "You've put the rose on the wrong side," he said. She had not. She let him keep the mistake, and they went in together to find a second jar.