Painterly koi fish tattoo in blue, orange and pink ink, with pink cherry blossoms, photographed on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi fish with cherry blossoms

Mixed · Photo

A large koi fish swims diagonally across the skin, with its head at the top and a second orange-tinted fish below. Loose, feathered linework and soft wash-like shading give the fish a watercolour effect, with blue and grey tones on the upper body and orange and yellow on the lower fish. Pale pink cherry blossoms are scattered over the upper left, and the background is blurred against the skin.

Koi Fish Cherry blossom Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond behind the chandlery on Carrow was dug by my great-uncle Tam, who swore the two koi in it had come ashore from a Japanese freighter in 1952, wrapped in a wet sail. Nobody believed him, and nobody argued either, because the big blue-grey one was as long as my forearm and bent the light the way a lens does. The orange one was younger and bolder, and it liked to rise under the footbridge whenever anyone crossed with bread.

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Every April the cherry tree by the pier dropped its petals on the water, and the fish followed them in slow circles, mouths opening and closing as if they were reading. Tam said the blossom was a gift from the mainland. My mother said it was just the tree being untidy. I thought the petals were a kind of letter, and that the koi were the only creatures on the island patient enough to read it through.

The winter Tam died, the pond skinned over at the edges for the first time anyone could remember. I broke the ice with a boathook every morning and fed them crumbs from the oatcake tin he'd left on the windowsill. The blue one stopped rising. I stopped sleeping well and took to walking the shingle at dawn, counting ferries that never came through the fog.

In May the tree flowered again, late and thin. I carried a bucket of fallen petals down to the pond and tipped them in. The big koi drifted up through them, gold flashing at its cheek, and turned once beneath the bridge before sinking into the dark green. I swept the rest onto the water until nothing was left on the stones but my own footprints, and the boats came in on the tide.