Japanese style dragon leg sleeve with red cherry blossoms running from the thigh down to the ankle, shown on a leg resting on a tattooist's paper.

Japanese dragon leg sleeve with cherry blossoms

Japanese · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A dragon with a snarling mouth, red eyes and flowing mane wraps around the thigh and coils down the leg, with its scaled body curling past the knee. Shading is black and grey with soft wash-like clouds, and red cherry blossom branches are scattered across the thigh, calf and ankle. The composition follows the shape of the leg from upper thigh to ankle, with the dragon's head at the top and the tail and blossoms towards the lower leg.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Kenji, the last train to the city left at nine without you, so I am writing this on the back of the timetable while the kettle goes cold beside me. Your father would have laughed. He always said the river dragon on the old screen in the waiting room was the only passenger who never bought a ticket.

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This morning I took the brush to the screen, as I do before the cherry trees come out. The dragon's eyes had faded again, so I mixed the red the way Grandmother taught me, with a drop of the ink she kept in the blue jar. Its mane runs the length of the panel and its scaled body curls down past the frame where the glass has cracked. I have always thought the clouds around it were meant to be rain, but this year they look like steam off the engine. Maybe that is only because the new line has finally reached us and the whole valley smells of coal.

The blossoms came out on Tuesday. The petals blew through the open doors and settled on the platform and on the timetable board, and by evening the rails were pink from one end of the halt to the other. I swept them into the gutter and they came straight back, carried on the wind down the track, following the curve of the line towards the bridge. I stood there with the broom until the signal lamp went green.

Come home when the dragon's tail reaches the ticket office, Kenji. I will have the kettle on and the eyes painted red.

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