Fine line black tattoo of a tulip on a stem held by a hand with a dotted cuff, placed on the inner upper arm.

Tulip held in a hand on the upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A single tulip on a long stem is held by an outlined hand at the bottom of the design, with a dotted line marking the cuff. The linework is thin and even, with a few curved leaves along the stem and no shading. The design is set small and centred on a pale, smooth inner upper arm against a plain white background.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Tulip Hand Flower Stem Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift on the fourteenth floor has been broken since March, so you take the stairs with the bin bag in one hand and the tulip in the other, because Mrs Okafor from number nine pressed it into your palm at the chute and would not hear a refusal. "It's from the window box," she said, "and it won't last on my side." The stem is wet where she wrapped it in kitchen roll. You carry it down past a heart spray-painted on the wall with two initials nobody bothered to cross out, past a landing where somebody's radio is murmuring cricket through a closed door.

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On the ground floor the car park smells of diesel and wet cardboard. The tulip is the only red thing for three blocks, and the boy on the bench by the bins keeps looking at it. You consider giving it to him. Instead you cross to the bus shelter, sit under the faded timetable, and turn the stem slowly between your fingers, the way Mrs Okafor turned the pages of her late husband's atlas when she told you about the river at Onitsha, and how he used to swear it was wider than the Thames.

The number 42 comes and goes. You are still holding the flower when the rain starts, fine and sideways, and a bus driver lifts two fingers from the wheel as if he knows you. The petals have begun to loosen at the top, unclenching like a fist that has decided to stop gripping.

You climb back up the stairs, slower now, and set the tulip on the sill of the landing window where the grey light falls. Then you knock on number nine to say it made the trip, and Mrs Okafor opens the door already reaching for the bin bag, as if she has been listening for your feet on every step.