Black line drawing of a three-part curled swirl with thin vine tendrils and small leaves on a white background, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three-part swirl with leaves and tendrils

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a central three-lobed swirl, with each curl formed by a thick, tapering stroke. Thin vine tendrils curl out from the left and upper right, and two small leaves sit at the lower left and upper right. The design is drawn in solid black on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Botanical Swirl Tendril Leaves Vine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the windfalls, they've been at the wasps since Tuesday. Sit on the upturned crate, Dilys, and let your knees rest. The old Bramley by the wall had three crooked limbs that split from one trunk like a fist opening, and every August the sap ran so sweet the blackbirds got drunk on it.

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My grandmother's brother, Emrys Tanner, took the pruning knife to that tree the spring the river flooded. He cut the middle limb out, and the other two curled away from each other, each one turning on itself like a tendril looking for a wall to climb. Nobody in the village could explain it. The vicar said God was tidying, and the postman said it was the frost.

Emrys said the tree was only leaning toward the light, the way a lad leans toward a girl across chapel. Come September, two small leaves came out at the tips, one on the low branch and one on the high, and that was the whole of the miracle. He sold the apples for a penny a sack and gave the rest to the pigs.

So when you ask me what the curls mean, I say they mean a tree that lost one arm and grew two more to hold on with. Now fetch me the jug. The wasps are in the cider again.