Fine line botanical tattoo of a curved sprig with small leaves on the inner upper arm, in black ink.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small sprig tattoo on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small curved sprig with short leaves, drawn in thin single lines, sits on the inner upper arm. The linework is delicate and even, and the ink appears in dark grey or blue-grey tones. The arm fills the frame against a dark top and a denim apron, with a blurred bakery shelf in the background.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Sprig Branch Leaves Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rye had sat too long in the proving cupboard, and by six the dough was sulking under its cloth. Ruth Carrow stood over the bench with her sleeves rolled and a bunch of bay she had no business using, because the man from the parish council had asked for the wedding loaves to smell of something green.

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Her mother had kept a drawer of old delivery notes, and on the back of one, in pencil gone silver, was a sprig drawn in single lines, curving over like a branch bowing under snow. Under it her mother had written, in capitals, BEND WITH IT, NOT AGAINST. Ruth had thought it was about the dough. She had been twenty-two then and thought most things were about dough.

She scored the first loaf with a blade, and the cut opened like a fan that had lost its nerve. Then she pressed the bay leaves into the second, and they burned black in the oven, and it came out flat as a slate. Ruth sat on an upturned crate in the back yard, the bakery lights still on behind her, and held the delivery note up to the grey light until the pencil lines were nearly gone.

When the wedding party came at nine, the loaves were plain. Ruth set them on the trestle with the note tucked under the last one, and nobody asked about the leaves. The bride broke the crust and the steam rose white between them, and the groom laughed at something she said, and Ruth went back to the cupboard where the rye had finally, obligingly, begun to rise.