Black and grey realistic tattoo of a tree with spreading branches and exposed roots running along the ribs and side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tree with roots on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large tree with twisting branches rises from roots that wrap over the hip, running up the side of the ribcage. The trunk and roots are shaded in soft greys with fine hatched linework, giving the bark a textured, realistic look. The image is a close side view with a dark garment at the top and bottom edges and a plain grey background.

Realism Botanical Ribs Tree Root Branches Leaves Bark

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sycamore came up through the expansion joint in the car park of Holloway Court the spring after they poured the new tarmac, and by the time Mr Okonedo from flat 41 started complaining about the lifting kerb, it had already split the bay outside the bins into three neat pieces. I was nine. I was the only one who thought it was clever rather than rude.

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My nan lived on the ninth floor, and from her kitchen window you could see the top of it, its branches level with the balcony rails, leaves going the colour of old pennies in October. She said trees didn't ask permission, they just waited until nobody was looking. The council sent a man with a saw in the summer of ninety-six. He stood with his hand flat on the trunk and looked up at the seventh floor for a long time, then put the saw back in the van and drove off without a word.

The roots did what roots do. They went under the bin store, lifted the paving slabs by the lift shaft, and found the drains the builders had laid crooked in the sixties. Every winter a bit more of the estate tilted towards the tree. Nan said the whole block would go over one day like a drunk leaning on a lamppost, and she said it fondly.

When they knocked Holloway down in 2011, the sycamore was still standing in the middle of the rubble, the only thing taller than the crane. I went back on the last morning with a flask of tea. Its roots were bared like fingers pushed up through wet earth, pale and twisting, holding on to nothing but ground. I put my palm against the bark, cold and ridged, and thought the tree had had the last word after all.