Black and grey fine line poppy tattoo on the back of a calf, with a stem, buds, leaves and a shaded diamond below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Poppy with diamond on a calf

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A single poppy in bloom sits at the top of the design, with its petals outlined in fine black linework and shaded in soft greys. A long stem with two buds and narrow leaves runs down the leg to a small shaded diamond at the bottom. The image is taken straight on against a plain tiled floor and pale wall, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Geometric Calf Poppy Flower Bud Stem Leaf Diamond

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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

Dear Marion, the lift is out again, so I've been climbing the eleven floors twice a day and counting the landings the way you used to count sheep. Mr Okafor on nine says the council will fix it by spring, which is what he said last spring.

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Something good has happened out on the balcony. The poppies you pressed into my Bible came up in the planter by the rail, three of them, orange as a traffic cone, and they opened all at once on Tuesday while the wind went round the block like it had lost something. Two buds are still shut tight on their long wiry stems. I've been staking them with the wooden lolly sticks from the chippy, because I don't trust the wind not to take them off in the night.

Do you remember the diamond we drew on the back of the gas bill when we were kids, the one we said was a window into the next street? I thought of it when I found the old biscuit tin in the bottom drawer. I've put one of the dried heads in a jar on the sill, and the seeds rattle when you tip it, like a handful of dice thrown on a table.

Come up in June, if the lift's working by then. Bring the tin and we'll fill the second planter together, and you can tell me what the stars look like from the coast, because from here all I can see is the car park and the bins.