Small red poppy tattoo with a fine green stem on the inner forearm, in a delicate botanical style.

Red poppy on the inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A single red poppy bloom sits at the top of a long, thin green stem that curves down the inner forearm. The petals are shaded with soft red and pink tones, with fine dark lines defining the folds. The small design sits against plain pale skin, with the rest of the frame showing a navy sleeve and a blurred background.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Poppy Flower Stem Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The officer turns the tin over in his gloved hands, then tips the lid. Inside lies a twist of paper with seeds in it, and beneath that a single poppy pressed flat between two sheets of blotting paper, its red faded to the colour of old brick. "For your aunt's allotment," you say, before he can ask. You had practised the sentence in the car park at Harrowgate and it still comes out too fast.

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He holds the blotter to the strip light. The stem is still there, a thin green line that runs almost the length of the page and bends at the top like a question mark. You had wanted to keep the whole plant. Your aunt told you to cut the bloom and leave the stalk long, because the seeds shake out along the stem when the wind gets into the head, and that is how a bank of poppies starts without anyone planting it. You have told this to nobody at the crossing, and you are not sure why you are telling it now.

He is quiet for longer than the job needs. Then he says his mother grew them along the cutting behind their terrace, and the council sprayed them every July until they stopped coming back. He slides the blotter into the tin and presses the lid down with his thumb. "Sow them in February," he says, "when the ground is still cold. They don't like being moved once they've got their roots."

You walk out with the tin under your arm. Somewhere behind the barrier a wagon reverses, and you think of the stem lying flat in the dark, one red head held above the paper, waiting for the ground.