Black and white photo of a solid black tree of life tattoo with roots inside a circle, centred on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree of life on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person's bare upper back, photographed from behind with the head turned away, shows a circular tattoo of a bare tree with spreading branches and exposed roots. The linework is solid black with fine detail in the branches and roots, and there is no colour. The tattoo sits centrally on the back against a dark background, with the neck and shoulders framing it.

Blackwork Botanical Back Tree Tree of life Root Branches Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the bargeman's knots the winter your uncle's boat, the Marigold, is laid up at Hythe Lock with her engine cold. Nobody warns you that the cut is ringed with old alders, but you find out quickly, because the roots under the towpath have lifted the brickwork at the lock side and the gate paddles stick every third turn.

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Uncle Ned says a tree that has lost its leaves is only resting, the way a lock-keeper sits on a bollard with his cap over his eyes. You don't believe him. For a week you have been counting the bare branches against the grey sky, and they look less like rest than pen strokes, thin black lines pressed down so hard the paper has nearly torn.

On the last frosty morning the water drops a foot overnight and the Marigold grounds on a shelf of root. You climb down the ladder in your wellingtons with the boat pole and crouch on the wet bank. Below the surface the roots spread out in a black fan, branching exactly as the crown does above you, as if the tree has been turned inside out and set around the water like a seal on a letter.

You work the pole free and stand a long time watching the ripples smooth themselves out. From the cabin Ned calls to ask whether you've drowned. You shout back that the tree has been holding the whole cut up from underneath, and that someone should tell the council before the lock falls in.