Black and white photo of a woman's bare back showing a grey botanical flower tattoo on the upper back and a grey plumeria and hibiscus tattoo across the lower back.

Floral tattoos across upper and lower back

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a woman in a dark, backless top, with two separate tattoos. One is a vertical spray of orchid-like flowers and buds running down from the upper back, and the other is a horizontal band of plumeria and hibiscus blooms with leaves across the lower back. The tattoos use soft grey shading and fine outlines, and the image is monochrome, so colour is not visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hester, The crate came up from the Falmouth packet on Tuesday with its lid nailed down and two of the orchid spikes already browning at the tips. Mr Pengelly swore the sea had got into it, though I suspect the dockhand who signed for it had stacked it beneath a barrel of salt pork for a fortnight. Forgive the smudged ink. My hands have not been steady since I opened it.

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The plumeria cuttings were the miracle. Someone in Honolulu had bound each stem in wet moss and oiled paper, and five of the seven kept a grey-green sheen under the bark. I set them in the warm pit beside the boiler, where the air smells of coal dust and wet slate, and by Thursday one had pushed out a pale knuckle of new leaf. The hibiscus came through less kindly, but its blooms, when they open, are the colour of a bruise going yellow at the edges, and I have never seen anything so deliberate.

A card was tucked under the moss in a girl's careful hand, addressed to whoever tended the glasshouse. Her name is Lani, and she asked that the strongest cutting be kept near a window so it could see the grey morning, since the sea was all it had known. I have put it there. Each day I stand by the glass and look at the stem, then at the Cornish sky, and wonder which of us is being asked to be patient.

Come at Michaelmas and see them for yourself. Bring your good gloves and nothing that needs ironing. Your loving brother, Edwin.

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