Black and grey traditional tattoo on a thigh, showing a peony, daisies, fern leaves, a stylised hand and a banner reading I long for you to hold me in your arms.

Peony and hand banner tattoo on thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey traditional tattoo on the outer thigh shows a large peony and two daisies framed by fern and leaf foliage. A stylised hand rises from the upper right, and a dotted-edge banner across the centre carries the words I long for you to hold me in your arms. The bold outlines are filled with dense black areas and soft grey shading, and the design fills most of the frame against plain skin.

Traditional Botanical Thigh Peony Daisy Flower Fern Leaves Hand Banner Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had been at the bench since six, pinching ants off the peony buds that the Haskett boy brought in from the glasshouses, when the bell over the door rang and Mr Corbett came in turning his cap in both hands. He wanted something for his wife's birthday. Nothing showy, he said, and then he stood there for a full minute looking at the buckets of daisies as if they might give him the words.

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"Something that says a bit more than roses," he managed at last. Ruth drew a dotted-edged card from the drawer, the sort the printer in Market Street ran off for ribbon ties, and began to write out a line she had carried around since her own wedding. It had been on the card in the tin of keepsakes Tom had given her the day he came home from the Mersey docks with a sunburnt neck and nothing to say. She had never been able to tell him she kept it.

She built the spray while Corbett watched. Fern went in dark and feathered, two daisies sat beside the big peony like neighbours at a christening, and a leaf or two curled up round the card where a hand might have been holding it. "Did you think that up yourself?" he asked. "Borrowed it," Ruth said, and tied the ribbon in a bow that would hold through a bus ride.

When he had gone, she stood with her palms flat on the cold zinc of the counter. Outside, a lorry ground past the window, and she was turning to the tap for water when the bell rang again. Tom was in the doorway, salt still in his hair, cap held low against his chest. She didn't need to ask him anything. She just reached for the card she had not yet put away.