Black and grey sunflower tattoo with stems and leaves on the outer upper arm of a person wearing a grey top and jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sunflowers on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two sunflower heads and a partly hidden third bloom on a thin stem with small leaves, drawn with fine outlines and soft stippled shading. It is in black and grey ink and sits on the outer upper arm, with the arm shown against a grey top, denim jeans and a bicycle in the background.

Botanical Upper arm Sunflower Flower Stem Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, the seeds arrived this morning in a jam jar wrapped in a carrier bag from the corner shop, which Mum says is the least romantic thing I've ever posted, and she may be right. I'm writing at the kitchen table at half eleven with the window open because the radiator has decided it's August again. Out past the end of the road the night buses groan towards Mare Street, and a fox has been sitting on the wall opposite as if it's paying the rent.

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You remember Mrs Halloran's plot on Sorrel Lane. She grew sunflowers taller than her shed and talked to them more than she talked to the council. When she died in March, the notice went up saying the ground would become flats by autumn. Last Thursday I went down with a torch after the last bus, and we cut the heads from the stalks before the men with the fencing arrived. The heads were heavy as bread loaves, and every one of them had turned to follow the streetlight, even cut.

I rode home at two in the morning with the jar in the bicycle basket, wobbling over the tram tracks and past the shuttered bakeries, and I kept thinking about what she used to say. Sunflowers follow the sun, she told me, but only because they've decided who's worth looking at. I planted the seeds in the window box before dawn. This morning the smallest seedling had bent itself round to face the glass, towards the kitchen where I'd been sitting up talking to nobody. I'm not sure what that proves, but I've left the light on tonight so it has something to look at.

Write back soon, and bring the spare trowel when you come.