Two matching fine line succulent tattoos in dark ink, one on a forearm and one on an upper arm, against white bedsheets.

Matching succulent outline tattoos on two arms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two outlined succulent rosettes in a single dark blue-grey ink sit on separate arms, one on the forearm and one near the elbow on the upper arm. The linework is thin and even, with the inner petals and centre drawn in fine detail and left unshaded. The pale skin and white bedding give the image a soft, muted palette.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Upper arm Succulent Flower Plant Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan kept her succulents on the back bedroom windowsill, where the sun came in hard enough to scorch anything with soft leaves. Every spring she snapped a rosette off the mother plant, left it on newspaper for a week until the cut end hardened, then pushed it into gritty compost. They didn't want fussing, she always said. Just forgetting now and then.

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After the funeral, Marnie and I stood in that bedroom and divided what was left. There was one plant, the lilac-tipped one in the chipped pot, and we split it with a bread knife, one half each. Marnie took hers to Aberdeen in a shoebox lined with a tea towel, because she was starting nursing in September and said she needed something alive to come home to. I put mine on my kitchen sill in Stockport in a mug of pebbles from the Wirral beach we'd gone to as kids.

Then the messages started. Marnie sent photos of her plant stretching towards a north-facing window, pale and leggy, reaching for light it couldn't get. She wanted to know what she was doing wrong. I told her I had no idea, which was true. I hadn't watered mine since spring, and each time I walked past it I felt a small pang and then forgot again.

On the Sunday I finally looked properly. Mine had sent out three tight pups in a ring around the mug, each one as neat as Nan's, their roots already needling into the pebbles. I sent Marnie a picture. She replied within a minute with her own windowsill, where a single new rosette was opening at the centre of the old one. I put the kettle on, found a bag of grit in the cupboard, and started a list of who else needed a cutting.