Black silhouette of a figure with two small figures beside it, with pink cherry blossoms and petals in colour, tattooed on a back.

Silhouette figure and cherry blossoms on upper back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

The design shows a solid black silhouette of a figure with two smaller silhouetted figures beside it, joined by a looping black line below. Three pink cherry blossom flowers with yellow centres and green leaves sit to the right and bottom left, with loose pink petals scattered around the silhouette. The black areas are solid fill with clean edges, while the flowers use outlined shapes with coloured fill against pale skin.

Japanese Botanical Back Silhouette Figure Child Cherry blossom Flower Petal Loop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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Blossom came out on the hospital trees the same week you left, which I suppose is the universe having a laugh. Pink all over the car park, stuck to windscreens like confetti nobody wanted. I sweep them off the bay doors at six every morning and they're back by the afternoon. Night shift makes you notice small things, because there's nothing else to look at once the monitors go quiet.

Last Tuesday a woman came up from the lifts at about three with two boys in pyjamas, one with his hair in a stubby plait that had come half undone, the other clutching a plastic dinosaur. Their dad was in theatre. She didn't say much. She just walked them down the long corridor the way you'd cross a frozen pond, one hand each, keeping them close to her hip. I sat them in the family room with a packet of custard creams and a blanket from the warmer, and the little one with the plait asked me whether the flowers outside were real or the kind they stick on birthday cards.

Real, I said. Every year, for about a fortnight, and then they go.

He nodded as if that was the sensible arrangement. The dad came out at half five, grey-faced and grinning, and the boys were asleep against their mum by then, all three of them folded into one shape on the vinyl sofa. I thought of you and that daft dance you did round the kitchen whenever the kettle was slow. Anyway, the petals by the bay doors are yours to pick up when you're home. I've left a bag of them in the top drawer of the desk. Don't tell the matron.

Love, Nell