Black and grey botanical tattoo of peonies and buds with stippled shading across the inner forearm, against a white brick wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony and bud on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large peony bloom and a smaller bud sit across the forearm, with a second bud at the top and several leaves filling the gaps. The linework is dark and defined, and the petals are shaded with dense dots and short strokes to give volume. The image is black and grey, with a plain white brick wall behind the arm and a hand visible at the lower right.

Botanical Dotwork Forearm Peony Flower Bud Leaf Botanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down, the 7.40 is always late and the kettle's on the wrong side of the glass. I'll tell you about Mrs Ada Pell, who kept the flower trolley under the clock at Harrowgate Junction for thirty-one winters, and the peonies she would never sell.

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Every Friday a porter called Nobby Hale came down from the signal box with coins in his pocket and a face like wet slate, asking for the big dark blooms, the ones that open like a fist unclenching. Ada always said they were spoken for. Nobody ever saw who for. She kept them wrapped in brown paper behind the tea urn, stems standing in a jam jar of cold water, and she said not a word about it.

It was the winter the line flooded that Nobby finally asked her straight. He stood on the wet platform with rain running off his cap and said, Ada, who's the bud for? She laughed, a dry sound like a match striking, and drew back the paper. Inside lay a bloom grown heavy with its own weight, petals packed tight like a promise kept close, and beside it a single closed bud no bigger than a thumb, waiting for a spring that had not yet come.

She pressed the bloom into his hands. Take the big one up to the signal box, she said, and tell them it's from the woman who stayed. Then she turned back to her urn, and Nobby, being a porter and therefore a man of few words, did as he was told.