Black and grey tattoo of a cracked light bulb with a leafy plant growing out of it, shaded in dotwork on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sprouting light bulb on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A light bulb with its glass broken open, and a leafy stem with several leaves growing up out of the top. The bulb is filled with stippled dotwork shading, while the leaves and the jagged glass edges are drawn with black linework. Shown straight on against a pale background on the inner forearm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, 14 March. The lamp over the sprung floor went at twenty to ten, right in the middle of the Pride of Erin, and the whole Palais dropped into that grey dusk where you can't tell a waltz from a row. Ruth Ambler swore she could see her own feet. I told her to keep dancing. Nobody leaves a floor like that for a bulb.

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I went up the ladder with the spare box under my arm and found the old fitting cracked clean through, the glass splintered back like the petals of a seed case. Standing in the broken shell, pushed up through the filament hole, was a green shoot no longer than my thumb. Three leaves, already creased open. I have had that fitting in my hand for eleven years and never once seen anything grow in it.

I didn't pull it out. I screwed the new bulb in beside it, the way Mr Hollis taught me, and called down that we had light again. The band struck up. Ruth came back to the middle of the floor with her hair coming down and her cheeks pink.

Friday, 17 March. The shoot is at the height of my knuckle now. Mr Hollis says the damp must have got in through the crack. I haven't told him I've started watering it with the tea urn cloth. Ruth says that's cheating. I think she's right, and I think the leaves are glad of it.

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