Black and grey Polynesian-style tattoo with tribal bands and two flowers across the back of a woman's neck and upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Polynesian-style neck and upper back tattoo with flowers

Blackwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a large tattoo running from the nape of the neck over the upper back. The design combines bold black tribal bands, swirls and a curved wave-like shape with two shaded flowers, probably plumeria. Fine hatching and solid black areas create the pattern, with grey shading giving the flowers depth against a plain light background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Losa had carried the cutting for nine days in a biscuit tin, wrapped in wet newspaper, and by the time the ferry nosed into the harbour at Tautira she had stopped checking whether the stem was still green. Her uncle Tane was waiting on the slipway beside a blue-hulled boat, and he was already sanding the paddle he had promised her father forty summers earlier, the blade cut with a wave that curled up and folded back like surf breaking over the outer reef.

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He took the tin from her without a word and tipped the cutting into a bed of dry sand behind the wash house, under a sheet of tarpaulin that rattled when the wind came off the lagoon. 'Salt will kill it,' he said, 'so keep the salt off.' Losa went out each morning with a cup of rainwater and counted the leaf nodes, then the swollen knots at the tips that might or might not become buds.

Nothing happened for twelve days. On the thirteenth, a single white flower opened at the end of the stick, five petals rolled at the edges like the ends of a tight ribbon. Tane came to see it with his cap crushed in both hands and stood looking for so long that the gulls went quiet on the roof.

That evening Losa carried the paddle down to the water and set it on the slipway for the tide to find. Behind her, on the sill, the flower was already dropping its first petal into the sand.

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