Fine line black tattoo of a single poppy with a long thin stem on the ankle.

Poppy on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single poppy bloom with cupped, ruffled petals and a dotted centre sits near the top of a long, thin stem. The linework is delicate and even, with no shading, so the flower reads as an outline. The design is in black ink on pale skin and is set against a dark background, with the stem running down towards the ankle bone.

Fine line Botanical Ankle Poppy Flower Stem Petal

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats came in at five on the Tuesday, and Dad's was the last over the bar, low in the water with cod and a split plank he'd patched with a tin lid. I was on the quay with the ice cart when he threw me the line. Behind him the sea was the colour of wet slate, and up the cliff path the poppies had already gone over, their papery heads bent like they were listening for something.

Keep reading

Nan Ruth kept the harbour's tally book in the back room of the net loft, a ledger with a cracked green cover. Every summer she pressed one flower between its pages, always from the sea wall where the seed blew in off the shingle. She never said why. When I asked, she only tapped the column of boat names and said the book was for counting who came home, and the flowers were for remembering what the weather looked like on the day they did.

This year I cut the stem myself. It was longer than I meant it to be, because the wall poppies grow leggy when the spring is wet, and the bloom had gone loose at the edges, petals cupped and ruffled like a hand that had just let go of something. I laid it flat under a Bible and a flatiron and went down to the quay before the tide turned.

When I came back the next morning, Dad was asleep in the chair with his boots on, and the ledger was open on the table. Beside his name, in Nan's neat hand, someone had written the date and the word *in*. The poppy was pressed in beside it, flat and faintly grey, as if it had always belonged there.