Side-by-side photos of matching script tattoos on the upper back, one reading Like Mother in grey and one reading Like Daughter in colour, each with a dandelion.

Matching dandelion script tattoos on the upper back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

The left photo shows the words Like Mother in black and grey script, with a dandelion head on the left and drifting seeds above the lettering. The right photo shows Like Daughter in dark green-black script, with a pink dandelion head on the right and fine pink seed lines above. The two images sit side by side and show the backs of two people from the shoulder area, with the tattoos at the same height.

Lettering Botanical Back Dandelion Seed Script Word Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the dandelion clock in the flour tin on the first hard morning of frost, when the kettle is still cold and your mother is already out at the top field with the ewes. It is a grey ball of seeds gone brittle, picked in summer and forgotten, or kept on purpose. You blow on it the way she taught you, and nothing moves. The seeds have clumped together with damp.

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Ruth Tolley, your mother's cousin, comes up the lane at noon with a trailer of hay bales and a face like weather. She sees the tin on the table and says nothing for a long while. Then she says the seeds only fly when the wind comes from the south-west, and it is not south-west today, it is hard east off the Pennines. You say you know. You have always known things like that. She laughs, short, and takes off her gloves one finger at a time.

After dinner you carry the tin out to the gate of the lower field, where the grass is furred white with rime. The wind swings round while you stand there, so quickly the hedge bends double. The clock opens like a hand. The seeds lift off and go over the wall in one long unbroken line, across the beck, past the ruined barn, and you watch until they are only specks above the church spire.

Walking back, you think about how the lambs learn the gate before they learn their own names. Your mother is at the kitchen window, pretending not to watch. When you reach the step she hands you a mug of tea and says, "Well, that's the last of them gone." You tell her there will be more in June, in the same ditch. She says, "There always are," which is what she always says.