Botanical tattoo of pink-outlined peonies, leaves and grey scrollwork across a person's thigh.

Peony and scrollwork floral piece on thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A floral design of three large peony or carnation-style blooms, leaves and curling scrollwork spreads across the outer thigh. The flowers are outlined in red or pink, while the petals, leaves and swirls are shaded in grey and black with soft, fine detail. The skin is lit by daylight from a phone camera, and the tattoo appears freshly done, with some raised skin visible around the lines.

Botanical Thigh Peony Carnation Flower Leaf Scroll Floral

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The customs officer turns your passport over twice, as if the photograph might rearrange itself. Behind you a lorry idles, its driver drumming the wheel. Under a false floor in the boot, lined with grey felt, lies a peony root wrapped in wet newspaper, and you can almost feel its damp through the fabric of your seat.

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The root belonged to your aunt Hanna, who kept three bushes in a yard that no longer stands. Every spring the blooms came in the same order: the pale pink first, then the two deep ones the neighbours called carnations because their petals were ruffled at the edges like a cheap Sunday dress. She dug the first cutting in the year the river flooded and swore it would outlive every border drawn across that valley.

"Anything to declare?" he asks. You say no, which is true in the way that matters to you. He lifts the corner of the mat, sees nothing but felt, then notices the sketchbook on the passenger seat, open to a page of curling leaves and scrolled stems you drew at her kitchen table the week before she died.

He waves you through. You drive until the flags vanish from the mirror, then pull onto the verge and open the case. The root has put out a single green shoot, bent into a question mark. You take a pencil from the glovebox and, on the back of the customs form, begin to draw the leaves around it.