Botanical tattoo of a tied bouquet of lavender and a poppy with a soft pink wash, shown on the upper arm.

Lavender and poppy bouquet on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A tied bouquet of lavender sprigs and a large open poppy-like flower with a central stamen cluster, all drawn with dark outlines. The flower petals carry a soft pink wash, while the lavender and the stems are shaded in grey, with a few smaller buds at the base. The bouquet is composed upright on the upper arm, with the stems bound by a string tie.

Botanical Upper arm Lavender Poppy Bouquet Flower Sprig String Stamen Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your grandfather never once bought me flowers from the shop on Mill Street, mind you, because Mr Halloran charged a shilling a stem and he thought that daylight robbery. What he did instead was walk up the lane behind the chapel every Sunday after the second bell and come back with his arms full of whatever the hedges had to offer. Lavender from the old cottage garden where nobody had lived since the war, and poppies that grew up through the cinders on the railway embankment, bright as a warning. He'd tie the lot with a length of baling string he kept in his coat pocket, pulled tight with that clumsy knot of his that never once came undone when I wanted it to.

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The first time, I told him he'd squashed the poppy half flat and it would be dead by teatime. He said flowers didn't die of being carried, they died of being left in a jar of cold water and forgotten, and then he made me hold the bundle while he went to find the good vase. We never did own a good vase. We used the enamel jug with the chip on its lip, and the lavender sat in it so long the smell got into the curtains.

When the telegram came from the depot in the spring of fifty-three, I went out to the lane with the string still in my hand and cut the very last sprig I could reach, grey and fragile, and I tied it up with one poppy, the way he would have. It sat on the mantel for a year. The petals dropped one by one and I let them lie where they fell.

I still have that string. It's gone soft as cotton and it's a poor bit of rope for anything now, but I'd never throw it away. Some knots are for holding things together, and some are only for remembering who tied them.