Red hibiscus flower over a black tribal sea turtle tattoo on the thigh, with shaded red petals and a green and yellow centre.

Hibiscus flower and tribal sea turtle on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A sea turtle with bold black tribal-style flippers and head is overlaid with a large red hibiscus flower that covers the centre of the body. The hibiscus has shaded petals, a yellow-orange stamen and a green centre, while the turtle shapes use solid black fill with curled and triangular detailing. The tattoo sits on a smooth area of skin against a light background.

Botanical Neo-trad Thigh Sea turtle Turtle Hibiscus Flower Tribal Polynesian

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hibiscus on the hall table had gone limp by Tuesday, and you were the one who had to decide whether to throw it out. Mrs Pellow kept the boarding house on Carrick Terrace with the rules pinned inside the larder door: no baths after ten, no sand on the stair runner, no talking about the sea over breakfast. The man in Room Four had arrived with a canvas sea chest and a sunburn that refused to fade, and he never once asked for the rules to be explained.

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He had brought back a drawing of a turtle from somewhere far enough that you could not pronounce the name of the island. Its flippers curled like fern heads, and its shell held a red flower the size of a dinner plate. He asked you to press the bloom between the pages of the telephone directory so he could keep it. You did, and the petals bled their colour into the paper, leaving a stain shaped like a fan. Each morning you carried his hot water up the stairs and watched him trace those curls with his thumb, as if they might lift off the page and swim out under the door.

On the last evening of August the tide came in higher than the lifeboat men liked, and the front rooms filled with the smell of wet wool and paraffin. Room Four was empty by then. The sea chest sat open at the foot of the bed, and a shilling lay on the pillow beside a note in his square capitals: FOR WHOEVER KEEPS THE HOUSE WARM. You folded the drawing into your apron pocket. Downstairs, Mrs Pellow was already scrubbing the step, and the sea went on with its slow, patient curls against the wall.