Neo-traditional botanical tattoo of white poppies with orange centres and green fern fronds wrapping around the elbow.

Poppies and fern around an elbow

Botanical · Other · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two white poppy flowers with orange centres and a long green fern frond, with fine black outlines and soft grey shading on the petals. The leaves are shaded in muted olive greens, and the design wraps around the elbow in three photographs showing different angles.

Botanical Neo-trad Other Poppy Flower Fern Leaves Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the poppies came up along the towpath the week after the lock keeper left, white as washing, each one with a burnt orange eye that catches the light the way a struck match does. I have been trying to draw them for you since Tuesday, but the pencil keeps going soft at the edges.

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Dad would have called the fern a useless weed, but it has made itself at home along the cabin roof and down the gunwale, fronds so long they bend under their own weight and tick against the window at night. I cut one for the vase and it lasted three days before the water went green, and I felt daft for keeping the stalk in a jar on the stove.

Mrs Okonedo from the boatyard says poppies like disturbed ground, that they can wait a decade in the soil for someone to dig it over. I told her that sounded like us. She laughed, then looked at me properly, the way she does when she thinks I am not eating.

I am moored at Hythe Bridge until the end of the month. If you come up on the train, bring the good tin of tea and wear something that does not snag. I will walk you along the bank and show you where the flowers grow, the ones that come back every summer whether anyone is watching or not.