Fine line colour tattoo of a lavender sprig with green leaves on the inner forearm, resting on a grey textured cloth.

Lavender sprig on an inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A slender lavender sprig runs diagonally along the inner forearm, with small purple flower buds clustered along a thin green stem and two narrow green leaves at the base. The linework is delicate and the purple petals are softly shaded, with light blending into the skin. The arm rests on a grey textured cloth, and the tattoo sits near the wrist, with the rest of the forearm left bare.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Lavender Sprig Flower Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lavender had gone soft in its hamper by the time the barge nosed into Hatford Lock, and you could smell it before you could see it, a sweetness turning a little sour, like jam left on a windowsill. Aunt Pell stood on the gunwale with the tiller bar under one arm and said nothing about it, which was how you knew she was counting the bundles in her head and finding them short.

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'Cut fresh off the bank field,' she said at last. 'Before the rain. Take the little knife.'

So you went up the towpath with the knife and a ball of waxed thread in your pocket, and the field ran down to the water in long grey-violet rows that hummed with bees. You cut slowly. Each stem had to come away whole, with its two narrow leaves still clinging at the base, or the buyers in Reading would not pay for it. The buds were tight and bluish at the tips, and when you pinched one the oil rubbed off on your fingers and stayed there.

You were tying the last bundle when the lock-keeper's wife came out of her cottage with a cup of tea she did not offer you. She looked at the flowers, then at you, then at the water. 'Your aunt always bought from the field,' she said. 'Never from the market.' It was not a question, and you understood she was talking about something older than the barge.

You left one sprig on the lock beam, tucked into the gap where the paint had cracked, and pushed off as the gates groaned open. Behind you the water closed over your wake, and the scent rose off the hamper, sweet and a little bruised, all the way to Reading.