Close photo of a shaded orange and brown maple leaf tattoo with a black outline and fine vein detail, placed on the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Maple leaf on the shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A single maple leaf is tattooed on pale skin near the shoulder, shown with its stem curling down at the lower edge. Black outlines define the lobed edges, and fine dark lines trace the veins across the leaf. The leaf is filled with warm orange and rust tones that fade gently across the surface, with the plain skin around it giving the design room to stand out.

Botanical Shoulder Maple leaf Leaf Vein Autumn Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The first leaf came down on the orchard path this morning, just one, lying on the wet grass between the Bramley rows as if someone had dropped it on purpose. I stood over it a long while before I picked it up. It had gone the colour of a fox in low light, rust at the heart and bright orange where the sun had reached it, and its points had curled like the edge of a burnt crust.

Dad would have made a joke about it. He always said the maples back home turned first out of pride, and I told him trees have no pride, only sap and timing. You would have sided with him. You always preferred to think the trees were showing off.

I pressed it flat inside the atlas on the hall table, the old one with the coffee ring on Lancashire. The stalk is still green, and I have left it that way on purpose, so when you come down at half term you can see it before the rest of the leaves go. Bring the good secateurs, the ones with the bent handle. I want the stem cut square before anything else happens to it.

The pickers finish the Bramleys on Thursday, and Mr Okafor says the wasps will be bad by the weekend, so keep your sandals in the car. Tell Mum I am eating properly. If the post is slow, I will take that as the leaves winning, and I will let them have this one.