Black and grey traditional flash drawing of a peony with leaves above a lettered ribbon banner, being sketched on paper by a hand holding a pencil.

Peony and lettering banner flash sketch

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil and ink drawing of a peony bloom with leaves and small buds, with a ribbon banner wrapped below it that carries lettering across several folds. The linework is bold and even, with solid black shading in the banner folds and along the stem. The drawing is monochrome on kraft paper, with a hand holding a pencil at the right edge and a white cup at the top.

Traditional Peony Flower Leaves Bud Banner Lettering Stem Pencil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mum's peonies had come up early that spring, fat and furious, and by eleven on the Thursday they had split their own bud cases across every bucket on the stall in Pennick Street. I stood under the striplight with gaffer tape and a clipboard, trying to shift two hundred stems to Eamon from the late van before the market warden came round with his torch.

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"You're open at night now?" Eamon said, nodding at the sign that hung from the awning. It was Nan's old banner, a strip of canvas she'd had painted in 1974, a ribbon wound round a bloom with words in faded blue across its folds. She'd hung it there the year she took the stall over, because she reckoned a flower seller ought to be honest about her moods.

"Only on bad nights," I said. "Good days I'm closed."

He laughed, counted out the cash in crumpled fives, and didn't ask about the other half of the joke, which was that on good days Nan gave the flowers away for nothing and sang along to the radio while she did it. I used to think the sign was about her temper. Standing there with the last bucket knocking against my shin, I wasn't sure it had ever been about anything but the flowers.

When the van pulled off, I found one bloom Eamon had missed, half open and bruised at the edge. I tucked it behind the canvas, where the paint had worn to nothing, and walked home with the empty buckets clanking in the dark.