Three red tulips on a back
Botanical · Back · Colour · Photo
Three red tulips rise up the skin on separate stems with green leaves, shaded in soft red and green tones. Black ink splatters and thin sweeping black lines surround the flowers, giving a loose, painted look. The design runs diagonally up the back, with the largest bloom at the bottom and the smallest near the top.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Our Nan always said the tulips came up the year the big shift went down, and she never once told it without spitting on the hearth first. You want to know why. Sit still, then, and I'll tell it the way she told it to me, with the kettle going and coal dust still in the creases of her knuckles.
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Mr Pryce at the Co-op had a seed catalogue from a merchant in Lincolnshire, and in it were tulips the colour of a cut lip. Nan sent away for three bulbs with two shillings from the tin under the stairs. She planted them on the bank above the washhouse, where nothing grew but dock and soot, and the men laughed, because who ever heard of a flower living in a pit's shadow. Every morning she carried a jug up from the standpipe and told them off for their cheek.
Spring came and the stems pushed through the black like a line drawn fast with a wet brush. The biggest bloom came first, down by the wall, and the two above it leaned over the colliery fence as if they wanted a look at the sea. When the pit closed that autumn and the men stood about the bus shelter with their hands in their pockets, she climbed the bank, cut one bloom, and set it in the window of the Welfare, red against the grimy glass.
Nobody asked her why she bothered. I reckon she wanted one thing on that hill that the soot couldn't quite cover. Mind your tea. It's stewed now, but it's still warm.
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