Colour tattoo of a twisting purple tree with black branches and magenta and teal roots running down the ribs and side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple tree with roots on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A tree with bare black branches rises up the side of the ribs, its trunk shaded in violet, purple and blue tones. Its roots spread down towards the hip in teal and magenta, with faint blue streaks across the trunk. The tattoo fills most of the frame against a plain light background and black clothing.

Botanical Ribs Tree Branches Root Trunk

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The slipway at Porthally has been cracking for three winters, and Mr Keast says the sycamore has to come out before the council sends a man with a saw. You stand at the top of the slip with a flask of tea gone cold and watch the roots work between the granite setts. They are not the brown you would expect. Near the water they run teal, then a bruised magenta at the tips, as if the tree has been dipping its feet in the dye vats up at the net loft.

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Your grandfather painted the trunk violet the year the harbour lights failed, because it was the last tin on the shelf and nobody could agree on the colour of anything after that. The paint has soaked into the bark over the decades. On still mornings the blue streaks run up it like wake, the marks left by the ferry that stopped calling in 1963. You know this is nonsense. You have still never once touched the trunk with a saw.

On Thursday the tide comes in high and the wind goes round to the east. You climb the slip with a torch and find the roots have heaved a single sett clear into the air. Beneath it sits a tin box with a rusted clasp. Inside are letters tied with fishing line, addressed to you in a hand you almost know, and a pressed sprig of blossom gone the colour of plums.

You tell Mr Keast nothing. You fetch the tin and leave the sett where it lies. By Sunday the lowest branch has put out buds, and the harbour below is so quiet you can hear the roots drinking.