Fine line black botanical tattoo of two curving sprigs of leaves on the side of a woman's ribs, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two botanical sprigs on the side ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with long blonde hair is photographed from behind, topless, with her arm bent across her body. Two mirrored sprigs of leaves and small buds are drawn in thin black linework on the side of her ribcage. The shading is minimal, the photo is warmly lit against white window blinds, and the tattoo sits in the lower half of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Ribs Leaves Sprig Foliage Bud Woman Back

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The myrtle has to be cut before the dew burns off, Mrs Okonedo says, and you are already late, kneeling in the wet bank behind the chapel wall with your secateurs and a bread bag. She wants two sprigs for the bride's bouquet, no more, each cut at a leaf pair so nothing bleeds. You have her instructions memorised against your will, and still you keep losing count of the buds.

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The bride is Tamsin, who is marrying a boy from the mill, and the whole valley has opinions about the mill. You don't care. You care that the two sprigs must match, so you lay them side by side on the church step, turning each until the buds face the same way, then flip one over and check again. Mirrored, Mrs Okonedo said. The left hand answers the right. You think this is ridiculous until the vicar's wife stops on the path to look at them and says nothing at all.

At the reception the sprigs stand in two tin cans either side of the cake, wrapped in damp cotton and brown paper. Nobody remarks on them, which you learn is the trick of greenery: it works by being ordinary. Then Tamsin's father gets up for his speech, loses his notes, and points at the cans instead, saying the hedge had given his daughter the same thing it gave every wedding in the valley, which was something to hold on to when the lights went down.

You walk home by the lane with the bread bag empty and a single leftover sprig in your coat pocket. Halfway up the hill you take it out and press a leaf between your thumb and finger, and it smells of cold stone and spilt wine. You had cut the second sprig from the far side of the wall, where the bank faces the sun, and you know without looking that it is the slightly brighter of the pair. Nobody will ever notice, and you decide that is fine.