Black and grey realistic orchids with cursive script lettering covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Realistic orchids and script on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, featuring realistic orchid blooms with detailed petal shading and a few buds and leaves. Cursive script lettering runs between the flowers, with the words 'You know' and 'Love' clearly visible. The soft greyscale shading gives the flowers depth against the dark background of the skin.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Orchid Flower Leaves Script Lettering Love Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret had kept the glasshouse at Hollins Bank for thirty-one years, and in all that time nobody had ever asked her to write anything down. So when the cards started arriving in the post box at the lodge gate, she assumed the postman was delivering someone else's mail. They came in pencil, on the backs of seed catalogue pages, always addressed to Mrs M. Ashdown, Orchid House, and always with the same first line underlined twice.

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She kept them in a biscuit tin under the potting bench. Phalaenopsis, the cards said, the moth orchid, do not water them on the crown. Keep the bark dry between drinks. The handwriting leaned forward as though it was in a hurry to get somewhere. Margaret read them at lunch with her sandwich going soft in its paper, and she found herself answering aloud, telling the empty bench what she thought of the man's advice.

In March the cards stopped. The last one had a single line at the bottom, squeezed in beside the stamp: You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep. Margaret turned it over, expecting more, and found only the grey print of the catalogue's cover price.

That spring the cymbidiums flowered early, the pale ones with the mottled lips. She cut three stems for the lodge kitchen table and left one by the potting bench, where the light came in sideways through the glass. Then, on a wet Tuesday, she went to the tin and wrote back, in pencil, on the back of a catalogue page, asking where he had got his bark from.