Colour botanical tattoo of two orange California poppies and a sprig of lavender tied with green leaves in a bouquet on the thigh, with a partial moth below.

Poppies and lavender bouquet on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A bouquet of two orange California poppies, a lavender sprig and green leaves is tied at the stem with a thin string that trails off to the lower left. The linework is dark and defined, with soft shading on the petals and leaves and lighter tones on the lavender buds. Orange, green and muted grey-purple ink dominate the composition, and the bouquet sits diagonally across the skin with a partial moth wing visible at the bottom edge.

Botanical Thigh Poppy Lavender Bouquet Leaves String Moth Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marguerite Sallow had counted the switchbacks twice before she decided the bouquet would not survive the descent unless she tied it tighter. The string was the last of a ball her brother had posted from the coast, waxed linen, and it had already cut a red line across her palm. Below the col the valley lay grey under cloud, and somewhere down there was the cabin where Ines Varga had been waiting since the thaw for one thing: the lavender her husband planted the summer before he went over the pass for good.

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The poppies were already dropping petals. Orange ones, bruised at the edges, the colour of a lamp turned low. Marguerite had picked them from the last meadow above the snow line, where the ground was so steep the flowers grew sideways out of the rock, and she told herself they would open again once they were in water. Her boots found the old mule track by feel. A pale moth followed her for a mile, wings flicking at the edge of her sight, and she did not swat it, because her grandmother had said moths carried messages between the living and the people who had walked this way before.

At the bend where the track met the stream, a woman stood by a sheepfold with a shovel over one shoulder. Ines did not ask how Marguerite had come by the flowers. She took the stems, shook the cloud water from them, and cut the string with a knife from her apron. "He always tied them left-handed," she said, and set the bouquet against the warm stone wall, where the afternoon sun would reach it.

Marguerite started back up without looking at the valley. Halfway to the col she stopped and turned. The wall was already glowing orange, and the cut string lay in the grass where Ines had dropped it, a loose line leading nowhere she needed to go.