Pencil sketch of a woman in profile framed by peony flowers, a botanical tattoo design for the shoulder and upper arm.

Profile portrait with peonies sketch

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a woman's face in profile, with her hair swept back and her eyes lowered. Peony blooms wrap around her face and climb across her shoulder and upper arm, drawn in fine outline with soft hatched shading. The image is in greyscale on a sketchbook page, with another partial sketch visible at the right edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The officer at the river crossing wanted to know what was rattling in the biscuit tin, and Ilse said it was a root of her grandmother's peony, which was true in the way most things she said at borders were true. He lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in damp newspaper, lay three brown knuckles of root with pink eyes just breaking the skin, and a card in her mother's looping hand that read Lavinia, 1931.

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Her grandmother had grown that peony up the side of a brick privy in a village where nobody thought flowers were worth the water. Every June the blooms came out heavy and ruffled, too big for their stems, and the old woman would stand among them with her hair pinned back and her eyes down, as though the flowers had said something she was too polite to answer. When the house was sold, Ilse dug what she could in the rain and told herself it was only a keepsake.

The officer said plant matter needed a certificate, and she had none. He said he could hold the tin, and she could apply for the papers from the other side, which would take a month. She said the eyes would dry out in a month. He looked at her for a long time, then at the card, then at the pink knuckles, and sighed the way men sigh when they have already decided.

He stamped the newspaper himself, a neat purple circle over one corner, and pushed the tin back across the counter. Ilse tucked it under her arm and walked out into the grey light. Over her shoulder, the stamp had landed right across the nearest bud, so that when she opened the tin again in the spring, the first thing to bloom would carry his ink in its petals.

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