Colour Japanese style tattoo of blue and purple peonies, red blossoms and green leaves across the upper arm and shoulder.

Peony and blossom tattoo on upper arm

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows large blue and purple peony flowers with ruffled petals, clusters of small red blossoms and teal green leaves. Bold black outlines define the petals and leaves, with soft blended shading inside the blue and purple flowers. Colour ink dominates the composition, which fills the upper arm and extends toward the shoulder against a dark background.

Japanese Botanical Upper arm Peony Flower Blossom Leaf Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wholesale floor under the railway arches never really sleeps, but by half three it has settled into the low hum of forklifts and cold water hitting concrete. You have sorted the peonies twice already because Mrs Okafor says the purple ones bruise if they sit against the blue, and she is right about most things before dawn. The blue ones still look impossible to the new lad, who keeps turning a stem over in his hands as if it might reveal a dye bath. Indigo, you tell him. Overnight, in a tub behind the cold room. The petals open anyway, ruffled and stubborn, as though nobody asked their permission.

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At twenty to four a van from Kent backs up to the loading bay with a crate nobody ordered. The label says Pimlico, but the pencilled note tucked under the twine says the red blossoms were meant for the girl who sells the blue ones. You read it twice. Mrs Okafor shrugs and says Pimlico is a bike ride, and the lad says it is across the river, which is not the same thing at four in the morning. You wrap the crate in wet newspaper, strap it to the rack of your bicycle, and set off before you can talk yourself out of it.

The streets are empty enough to hear your tyres hissing on the wet tarmac. You cross at Vauxhall with the lamps doubled in the black water and the Houses of Parliament pale across the bend, the red blossoms knocking gently against your back with every pedal. By the time you reach the shuttered shop in Pimlico, the sky has thinned to the same pale blue as the petals, and you are ringing the bell with your elbow, a crate of red blossom against your hip and no idea yet what she will say when she opens the door.