Black and grey realism tattoo of a lily across the forearm, with a small music note on the inner wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded lily and music note on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large lily with soft petals, shaded stamens and dotted spots fills the lower forearm, drawn in smooth grey shading that fades into the skin. A small single music note sits higher up near the wrist in solid black linework. The photograph is taken at an angle on a table with a green mat behind the arm, and the lily is the main focus.

Realism Botanical Forearm Lily Flower Music note Petal Stamen

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways down Pike Row since six, and by half past nine the stallholders have stopped pretending their awnings keep anything dry. You stand behind the last bucket of Easter lilies, counting stems into a cardboard box, while the busker under the railway arch starts up again. He plays the same three chords he played yesterday. You know the gap before the fourth one, the little hitch where his thumb has to find the string again.

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Mrs Okonedo from the cheese stall comes over with two coffees in paper cups and asks whether you're binning the rest. Her fingers smell of brine and her headscarf is soaked dark at the edges. You tell her the petals are still tight and they'll open on a windowsill if they're kept out of the draught. She says lilies are the only flowers that know when they're being looked at. You say that's nonsense, and she says that's what everyone says right before they start staring.

When the busker reaches the gap, you take three stems from the box, shake the water off them, and walk them through the rain to the arch. He doesn't stop playing. He nods at the flowers, then at the note he has just fumbled, and you hear it land a beat late, bright and slightly wrong and somehow exactly in time with the rain.

You leave the stems propped against his open case, pale heads bowed over the coins. By the time you reach the car park the petals have begun to darken at their tips where the water got in. Behind you the fourth chord finally comes, a little sharp, and you do not look back to see whether anyone has stopped to listen.