Colour tattoo of a kokeshi-style doll in a blue kimono with cherry blossom branches and a banner reading FOR YOU ANYTHING, on a person's upper back.

Kokeshi doll and cherry blossom on a shoulder blade

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A kokeshi-style doll with a black bobbed hairstyle and a blue kimono sits in front of a branch of pink cherry blossom, with a ribbon banner across its waist reading FOR YOU ANYTHING. Bold dark outlines define the doll, banner and scattered pink flowers, with solid fills of blue, green and pink. The tattoo is photographed on a person's upper back and shoulder blade, with the design centred and the surrounding petals spread across the skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming off the canopies all morning, pooling in the dip by the fish van, and Dilys Marsh had stopped hoping for customers. She sat behind her trestle of chipped crockery with her hands tucked into her sleeves and watched the water run in threads down the plastic sheeting. At the bottom of a biscuit tin, under a tangle of brass keys, she found a wooden doll no taller than her thumb. It had a bobbed black head, a blue kimono and a face left blank, and it stopped her hand.

Keep reading

Someone had painted a branch of cherry blossom across its back, the petals gone soft at the edges from years of being turned over by careless fingers. A paper ribbon curled beneath its chin with words written in careful capitals. Tucked behind the doll was a slip of card in the same hand: FOR YOU ANYTHING. Dilys knew the handwriting, or believed she did. It belonged to Gwyn, who had written her little notes like that for forty years and then stopped, the year the hospital corridors got longer.

A boy of about nine ducked under the awning, dripping, asking whether anyone had a spare chain for a bike. She said no, but he kept looking at the doll. He had two pound coins in a wet fist. "It's for my nan," he said. "She says she doesn't want anything." Dilys wrapped the doll in tissue paper and put it in a paper bag, and the boy counted out the coins twice before he trusted them.

He ran off through the rain with the bag held inside his jacket. Dilys watched until he turned the corner by the bakery. Then she took the card from the tin, read it once more, and slid it back under the keys, leaving the empty space where the doll had been.

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