Colour tattoo of large purple and pink clematis-style flowers with grey dotted leaves across a shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple clematis flowers on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A large purple flower with a paler centre dominates the design, with a softer pink bloom behind it and a second bud partly visible at the top. Grey leaves with stippled, dotted shading frame the flowers and trail down the upper arm. The soft pink and lilac tones contrast with the grey foliage, and the design wraps across the shoulder edge of the frame.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Flower Petal Leaves Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the ninth floor of Vesta Court had planted anything, so the clematis took everyone by surprise, the plant included. A cutting had come up at the foot of the car park wall the spring the lifts broke for a month. By June it had found the drainpipe and was climbing it as if it had somewhere to be.

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Mrs Dunmore on the fourth floor said it was a vine that wanted the sky more than the ground. She said this to anyone who would listen, which was mostly the pigeons. Her grandson had told her clematis liked its roots kept cool and its head in the sun, so each evening she tipped washing-up water on the bricks and tied the loose stems to the railings with strips of old pillowcase.

By the time the wind came in off the estuary in August, the flowers had reached the balconies. There were big lilac stars with pink ones opening behind them, and grey leaves dotted all over like frost on a window. A night-shift baker in 9C leaned out one morning and cut a single bloom for her kitchen table. The next morning there were two blooms on the rail, then four, and nobody on the estate ever worked out who had been cutting what.

The autumn Mrs Dunmore moved to her daughter's in Kent, nobody thought to cut it back. It kept going floor by floor, past the washing lines and the dead satellite dishes, until it spilled over the roof. On still evenings you can see the purple from the bus stop, a bit of weather nobody ordered.