Black and grey botanical tattoo of a peony with leaves across the outer forearm, with two small swallows near the wrist.

Peony and swallows on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large peony bloom with layered petals and several shaded leaves covers the upper outer forearm, with a few small sprigs above it. Two small swallows in flight sit on the inner forearm near the wrist. The petals use fine outlines and soft grey shading, while the leaves are filled with darker solid tones. The image is a close crop of a bare arm, with a plain white top at the left and a blurred grey background.

Botanical Forearm Peony Rose Flower Leaves Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to the fairground in Witney the same week the peony by the tea hut opened, and my father said that was the only weather forecast he trusted. He stood on the back step of the Waltzer, painting a gilt scroll onto a gondola that had been crooked since Easter, and tipped his cap at the roofline where the birds were stitching the sky together.

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We carried that peony in a tin bucket on the lorry all season. A widow in Shipton had given it to me in exchange for two goldfish I'd won and she didn't want. Every town we moved to, I lifted the bucket down at dawn, checked the soil hadn't dried, and set it back in the shade of the generator. Dad called it my dowry. I called it the only thing on the site that never asked for change.

By October the takings were thin and the swallows had gone without saying goodbye, the way they always did. At the last pitch, a damp field outside Thame, I stood on the verge with a trowel. The churchyard wall was low enough to lean on. I dug a hole where the grass met the gravel, tucked the roots in, and pressed the soil flat with my boot.

Spring came up through the lanes before the fair did. When the lorry rolled past that field in April, there was a dark bush the height of my knee, with three buds fat as walnuts, and above it two small birds were working the air over the hedge as if someone had paid them to. My father slowed the cab. Neither of us spoke. He reached for the horn and gave it one short blast, which in our family meant the same as thank you.