Black and grey lily tattoo with trailing swirls and small stars on the side of the ribs, with bright cyan star graphics added over the photo.

Lily and swirls on the side ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded grey lily with spotted petals sits at the top of the design, with a few small black stars scattered beside it. Thin, sweeping black swirls and tendrils run down the side of the torso beneath the flower, with some soft grey shading in the petals. Bright cyan star shapes that look digitally overlaid sit across the skin and are not part of the tattoo ink.

Botanical Ribs Lily Flower Star Swirl Tendril

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lilies came at six in a van that smelled of diesel and wet cardboard, and by the time you had the buckets lined along the back wall of the marquee, Mrs Harcourt had asked you twice whether the spotted ones were meant to look like that. You told her yes. You had told her yes on the phone too, when she rang from Harrogate wanting to know if tiger lilies were unlucky at a wedding, and you explained that the freckles were the point, that they made each petal look like something that had been out in the weather and come through it.

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Nobody had asked you to do the ribbon. You did it anyway, on the long trestle tables, black tulle knotted in loose curls around the glass jars so that when the candles were lit the shadows would writhe like smoke off a bonfire. Above the tables the electricians strung cold white stars on wires, and every so often one of them blinked a clear, impossible blue, as if the sky had been mislabelled.

The storm came at nine. The sides of the marquee bellied in and then snapped free of their pegs, and you were the one holding the centre pole with your whole weight while the best man shouted for torches. When it passed, the field was a lake and the lilies were floating face up in it, orange and speckled, their black stamens drifting like ink. You waded out and gathered them one by one until your arms were full.

In the morning the bride found you asleep on a stack of chairs with a single stem balanced across your knees. She didn't say anything. She just tugged a strand of black tulle from the nearest runner, wound it twice round the stem, and tied it off with a knot that would hold. Then she walked out into the grey light to see whether the sun had come up over the water yet.