Botanical tattoo of a purple thistle with black outlined swirling stems and leaves on the top of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Thistle and swirling stems on the top of a foot

Botanical · Other · Mixed · Photo

A thistle flower with a purple head and grey-blue leaves sits at one end of a black-outlined stem that curls into spirals and tapers into a pointed leaf. The linework is smooth and fairly fine, with soft colour shading in purple and blue-grey on the bloom and leaves. The design is set diagonally across the top of a bare foot against a pale background.

Botanical Other Thistle Flower Leaves Stem Swirl Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The thistle came up the same week the lift on the fourteenth floor broke for the third time, which my mother would have called a sign and I called Tuesday. It pushed through the crack where the balcony meets the render, a spiky grey-green fist, and by June it had opened a purple head the size of a teacup. Mr Adeyemi from flat nine said it was a weed. Mrs Rennie said it was lucky. I put a jam jar of water beside it and told nobody.

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Everyone on Hallam Court was packing that summer. The Kerrs went to Dunfermline, the Bains to a semi with a drive, and my boy Callum kept showing me listings on his phone, rooms with carpets that didn't smell of the stairwell. He wanted me on the ground floor of something new. I said I'd think about it. I thought about the bus route and the chemist and the way the sun came round the west face at six, and I did not think about moving at all.

In August the scaffolders came and asked me to shift my pots. One of them stopped to look at the thistle and said his nan had one inked on her ankle, and asked whether it was a weed or a flower. I told him it was both. He laughed and carried my geraniums inside for me.

Callum came round the next Sunday with a van booked for the Friday. He stood on the balcony with his hands in his pockets and saw the stalk, bent over now with bees working the head. He didn't mention moving. He just reached past me, snapped off the dead lavender, and left the thistle standing, which was, I think, the nearest thing to a blessing I'd get from him.