Two arms pressed together showing matching fine line botanical tattoos of small sprigs on the inner forearm, in black ink.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching fine line sprigs on two forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two inner forearms sit side by side, each with a small fine line sprig of foliage in black ink. The left arm has a single diagonal stem with small leaves, while the right has a pair of stems crossing in a V shape with a single dot beneath. The linework is delicate and even, and the plain light skin and dark clothing keep the focus on the tattoos.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Sprig Branch Leaves Stem Dot Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock above the nurses' station says twenty to four, and the ward has settled into the hush that means either somebody is finally asleep or somebody is about to need you. You are counting paracetamol into paper cups when Dev comes out of bay six holding a jam jar in both hands. Inside it, a sprig of grey-green herb stands in an inch of water.

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"Gran says it's for the window," he says. "Lavender's dead on the sill, and she wants something alive looking at the car park."

You take the jar because the alternative is an argument at half three. In the bay, Mrs Carrow lies with her hand flat on the blanket, eyes sharp for someone her age. "My sister gave me the first cutting," she says, "the summer we were both still in Lewisham." She explains how to take a stem at a slant, strip the bottom leaves, and push it into soil, and how it will root if nobody moves it. You promise to find a pot. She says you won't, but you can find a jar, and you already have.

On your break you sit in the cold corridor by the linen cupboard and think of the cereal-box drawing you and your sister made as kids: two stems crossed like a pair of arms, a third leaning off on its own, and a dot underneath where you argued about whose the pollen was. You had kept the box for years. You don't know where it went.

At six the day staff come in smelling of rain. You hand over the chart and the jar, and the new nurse pulls a face at the water. You pass her Mrs Carrow's instructions, word for word, because nobody else will get them right. Then you walk out into the grey morning with a single cutting wrapped in damp tissue in your coat pocket, already deciding which pot it will go in.