Black and grey botanical tattoo of a tulip with a long stem and curling leaves on the side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tulip tattoo on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A tulip-like flower with a curved stem and two trailing leaves is drawn in black ink on the side of the ribs. The petals use soft grey shading that fades into the skin, while the outlines and stem are darker and more defined. The flower sits near the centre of the frame against a plain skin background, with a dark top visible at the upper edge.

Botanical Ribs Tulip Flower Stem Leaf

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have carried the bulb up from the allotment in your coat pocket because the frost has been at the ground since Tuesday, and Mrs Ashworth at the top of Colliery Row said nothing would come of a tulip planted in coal-dust soil. The pit wheel is still turning over the hill when you kneel by the back wall and press the bulb into black earth that smells of struck matches.

Keep reading

Your father comes off the back shift with his lamp still clipped to his cap and stands over you without speaking. He watches the shoots push through in March, pale as candle wax, then watches them darken to something nearly grey. Every morning you check the petals for colour and find only shadow, folded soft as ash, the edges thinning where the light falls. Nobody on the row believes it will open.

It opens on the first warm Saturday in May, all at once, while the men are down the shaft and the women are pegging sheets across the lines. The bloom is smoky and translucent at the rims, and a single leaf trails off the stem like a hand reaching for a wall. You cut it with the kitchen scissors and carry it to the pithead gate, where the day shift is walking out.

Your father takes it, turns it towards the light, and says nothing for a long time. Then he tucks it behind the band of his cap, beside the lamp, and walks home up the hill with the petals bent against his temple. Nobody on the row mentions the colour again.