Colour botanical tattoo of two sunflowers and autumn leaves across a woman's upper back and shoulder, viewed from behind.

Sunflowers and autumn leaves on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

Two sunflowers with dark grey centres sit among orange, red and green autumn leaves, arranged in a loose cluster across the shoulder blade. The petals and leaves are rendered in colour with soft shading and fine detail on the veins and petal edges. The composition fills the upper back and curves over the shoulder, with the photo taken from behind.

Botanical Shoulder Back Sunflower Leaves Autumn leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate hinge had rusted through over the winter, so you were the one sent up the hill with the pliers and a tin of oil. By the time you reached the outer ward, the wind had already dragged a drift of oak leaves against the wall. Half were the colour of rust and the rest were brown and curled like pastry. Between the broken arches the sunflowers still stood, a dozen gone to seed, their heads so heavy they knocked against the mortar.

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Nobody knew who had planted them. Your grandmother said a lady of the house had done it the year the roof came down, to give the crows something to argue over. Every morning the heads turned east as though someone had called them from the keep, and you caught yourself doing the same, counting the petals on the biggest one while the oil dripped onto your thumb.

Under the lowest stone of the threshold, where the mortar had crumbled, you found a tin box wrapped in oilcloth. Inside were seed packets dated in pencil and a letter folded in four, addressed to whoever came next. It said only: keep the ones facing the sun, the rest will manage. You read it twice, then put the packets back and pressed the stone down with your boot, the way you would close a gate on something still growing.

Walking down, you looked back. The sunflowers had turned to follow you, and the oak leaves kept sliding past your ankles, gold on the path. When you finally swung the gate, it sang as if it had never been broken.