Realistic colour sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder showing a hummingbird, red poppies, poppy seed heads and a blue butterfly, shown from two angles.

Hummingbird and red poppies on a full arm sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A realistic sleeve tattoo covers the shoulder and upper arm, with a blue-green hummingbird in flight near the top and large red poppies in full bloom below. Dark poppy seed heads, grasses and a blue butterfly are rendered in soft grey shading against a smoky background. The photo shows two side-on views of the same arm, with the sleeve's soft shading and vivid red and teal colour clearly visible.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Hummingbird Poppy Butterfly Grass Flower Bird Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The poppies came up along the tip wall again this June, the way they always do once the spoil has been left alone long enough to forget what it was. Dad would have called them weeds. I went out with the tin you left on the dresser and gathered seed heads as if I were taking stock of a life. Eleven were already dry and black as burnt buttons, rattling when I shook them, so I pocketed the lot and walked them down to the chapel allotment where Mrs Pryce still grows her sweet peas.

Something else happened on Tuesday that you won't believe. A hummingbird came in through the broken pane above the lamp room bench, green as a bottle and hanging in the air over your old lamp as though it had paid for the seat. Mr Jenkins swore it was a bad sign. I told him birds don't read signs, they follow whatever sugar water someone has left out. He didn't laugh. He stood with his cap in both hands while it circled the room twice and went back out through the glass, and afterwards he said it looked like something the lads would have painted on a tin box if any of them had ever been somewhere warm.

The seed heads are on the windowsill now, lined up by size like the teeth of a comb. Some mornings the rattle sounds like the cage going down at half past five, and then I remember the cage stopped for good in March. Come home for the harvest, Nell. Bring the blue butterfly you kept in your coat pocket for a fortnight after the funeral, and bring whatever it is you have stopped saying in your letters. The poppies will still be here, and so will I, dragging the hose along the tip wall and waiting for you to write that you're coming.

Love, Gwen