Black and grey botanical tattoo of lilies, pansies and scrolling swirls across a woman's upper back, shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral swirl tattoo across shoulder and back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's back and upper arm, with the head turned away, show a black and grey tattoo of lilies, pansy-like flowers and ornamental scrolls. The linework is bold and dark, with soft grey shading in the petals and leaves of the lily on the shoulder. The tattoo sweeps from the upper back over the shoulder and down the arm, against a plain white wall and a black top.

Botanical Back Shoulder Upper arm Lily Flower Pansy Swirl Scrollwork Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wagons were already rolling when you laid the last lily on the gallopers' panel, so you finished it in the back of the lorry with the engine ticking and a paraffin lamp swinging from a hook. Mr Okonedo had asked for something soft above the Dragon's Tail, something a child might look at from the saddle as the horse came round. Lilies were cheap to mix in black and grey, and the paint did not have to be bright to read well under the bulbs after dark.

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Winifred, who sold the tickets from a booth shaped like a pagoda, watched you work each evening from the step. She wanted to know why the pansies had faces. You told her they were only where the brush had stopped, which was true enough. The scrolls you pulled in single strokes, never lifting until each curl closed back on itself, and by the end of the season the ache in your wrist felt like something you had earned.

The fair folded in October. The Dragon was sold to a collector who wanted it for a hall in Scarborough, and you never saw it installed. Winifred's letter arrived the following spring with a snapshot tucked inside, a small boy astride the lily side of the horse, the paint gone soft and grey in the faded print.

She wrote that in the late light the shading on the lily still catches, and that the pansies look as if they might drop off in a breeze. You read it twice standing at the kitchen sink, folded it into your apron pocket, and went back to the bench, where a new scroll was waiting to be closed.