Black botanical leaf sprig tattoo behind a person's ear, shown in a black and white close-up photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small leaf sprig behind the ear

Botanical · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small sprig of three pairs of slender leaves rises from a single stem behind the ear. The leaves are built from fine, stippled dots and light shading, giving a soft, textured look. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the sprig sits on a plain background with the ear and hair framing it.

Botanical Dotwork Neck Leaf Sprig Branch Stem Plant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo-Hale wanted the sprig to be the one thing nobody remarked on, so I cut it from the willow at the bottom of the churchyard wall rather than from the florist's box. My aunt would have had a fit. She always said foraged greenery wilts before the vows are done.

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It did not wilt. I spent the morning at the vicarage kitchen table with a bucket of cold water and a pair of snips, stripping the lowest leaves so the stems would lie flat against the bouquet. The groom's father kept asking whether the willow was for mourning. I told him it was for a wedding, and he went off looking unconvinced, which seemed fair from a man who had buried a wife two winters before.

The service ran late because the organ wheezed through the second hymn. In the gap, the bride caught my sleeve in the vestry and asked if I had one more stem. She wanted it tucked into her hair at the back, out of the photographer's frame, where only she would know it was there. I fixed it with a single hairgrip, three pairs of leaves rising as if a small wind had lifted them and then thought better of it.

She went out into the light looking like someone who had settled a long argument with herself. I stayed in the vestry counting the leftover snips, and found I had kept one more than I needed, folded in my handkerchief. I still have it, pressed flat inside a hymn book, and it has not wilted yet.