Red and yellow flower tattoo with shaded petals and a black script phrase, on the lower back, in a neo-traditional style with lettering.

Red flower with script saying Your Pain is a Gift

Neo-trad · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large red flower with shaded petals, a yellow centre and green stamen sits on pale skin, with a gothic-style letter D on a smaller petal to the left. Black script lettering reading Your Pain is a Gift curves beneath and to the right of the bloom. The petals use soft red and white shading with dark outlines, and a blue fabric edge runs along the bottom of the frame.

Neo-trad Lettering Back Flower Petal Script Lettering Phrase

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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 Tomas, the bulbs came over the pass on the mule the week the snow turned to slush, wrapped in damp newspaper and tied with the green twine you always hated. Mrs Ferrier at the post hut swore the sack smelt of dirt and cough drops. There are forty-one bulbs, each the size of a clenched fist, and I have written every name on a scrap of card because you will want to know which one is the red with the white throat.

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I found the phrase in Mother's recipe tin, under the cloves, scratched into the lid in her looping hand: Your pain is a gift. When I was nine I thought it was the cruellest thing she ever wrote, and I still do not believe it, but the tin has sat on the sill above the forcing shelf for thirty years. Every February the red amaryllis that grows from its bulb throws up a stalk taller than my elbow, and it has never once asked me for anything.

The little gothic D on the first pot label is for Dorotea, the greenhouse cat we buried under the quince. I stamped it myself with the brass punch from the saddler's, and the ink ran in the damp, so I went over it with a nib. It looks like it was always meant to be there.

Come up before the thaw closes the road. Bring the tin if you still have it. The red one is ready to split, and I would rather hand you the knife than argue about who was right again. Your sister, Ines.