Black and grey linework tattoo of two peonies with leaves in a botanical style, sitting on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peony cluster on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A cluster of two peony blooms with layered petals and several leaves, drawn in black outline with fine interior detail on the petals and leaves. The work is in black ink and grey tones, with light shading that gives the petals some depth. The design is centred on the side of the ribs, with the grey fabric draped across the upper edge of the frame.

Botanical Ribs Peony Flower Leaves Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You carry the box of roots up the eighty-three steps because the boat could not land on the ebb, and the salt has already soaked through the brown paper. Mrs Ferris at the mainland nursery swore they would not take to rock. You plant them anyway in the lee of the lamp house, in soil you hauled over in sacks on Anstey's cart, and you tell yourself the wind is only a kind of weather.

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Through the autumn you water them with rain from the gutter, the bucket hanging heavy from your shoulder each evening before the lamp is lit. Nothing shows. The gulls sit along the wall and watch you as if you owe them an explanation. Tom Acklam, the relief keeper, laughs over his tea and says roses never liked the sea, and you tell him these are not roses, and he says that makes it worse.

In June a bud splits the grey, then a second, both the colour of the inside of a shell and heavy as clenched fists. The wind tries to take them and fails. You stand with the log book open on the sill and find you have written the blooms in the place where the weather should go.

In October the storm comes in sideways and strips the lower leaves, but the flowers hold. You climb the ladder with a length of twine and tie the stems to the iron railing, so that whoever climbs up after you will have something to look at besides the water.