Soft pink cherry blossom branch tattoo in a botanical style on the side ribs of a person's torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink cherry blossom branch on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A branch of pink cherry blossoms, with several open flowers, buds and drifting petals, runs diagonally across the side of the ribs. The flowers are shaded in soft pinks and reds, while the thin dark stems and small buds are drawn in fine black linework. The composition is centred on the tattoo against bare skin, with a light blue garment and a hand with turquoise nails at the edges of the frame.

Botanical Fine line Ribs Cherry blossom Branch Flower Petal Bud Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming sideways across the car park since seven, so by half past nine the bucket of cherry branches on my stall had lost more petals to the wind than to any customer. I bought them from a man in Kent who forces them in a heated shed, cut them when the buds were just showing colour, and sold them to anyone who wanted a bit of spring in a flat with no windows that opened. Most people wanted a single stem. Nobody asked how long it would last.

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A woman in a yellow mac stopped at the trestle and asked for five of the fullest branches for a christening on Saturday. She kept touching her coat pocket as if a list might leak out of it. I wrapped them in brown paper and told her to keep them out of the draught and change the water every morning. She paid in coins, then lingered over the petals that had blown onto my soggy cardboard sign. 'They look like they're still falling,' she said. 'They are,' I said. 'That's the only honest thing about them.'

She laughed, but not much, and asked whether they'd still be pink on Saturday. I told her the truth: forced blossom goes quickly once it's away from the cold, and by Thursday the flowers would be paper and the stems bare. She studied the bundle for a long time, then pulled one stem free and held it against the grey sky, the way you'd check a coat against a colour swatch.

'Then I'll take a live one,' she said, and handed me a tenner for the one twig nobody had wanted all morning, two buds still shut tight. When she'd gone I looked down. Rain was pooling in the gutter, and the petals were turning slowly on the water like pink coins, all of them still falling.