Black and grey botanical tattoo of two open flowers with leaves and stems on the upper arm, with dotwork shading on the foliage.

Two flowers with leaves on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open five-petalled flowers with a central cluster of stamens, joined by curving stems and surrounded by pointed leaves. The petals are shaded with soft grey gradients and fine hatching, while the bold black outlines and dotwork stippling on some leaves give the design definition. The composition is a vertical cluster that runs up the outer side of the upper arm, with the lower flower slightly overlapping the upper one.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Flower Leaves Stem Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain came sideways across the market square at half eight, and by nine the awning over your stall had begun to sag in the middle like a wet hammock. You had already lost three buckets of dog roses to the gutter. The rest sat in tin buckets under the tarpaulin, five petals each, pale as skimmed milk, their stamens bristling like the wire brushes Mr Okonedo used on the fish slabs next door.

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Pearl came at ten past nine, the way she always did, with her collar up and a carrier bag full of pennies. She wanted two stems, no more, and she wanted them to lean into each other. "They're not lovers, Pearl," you told her, wrapping them in damp brown paper. "They're just roses that grew on the same hedge." She laughed and said that was exactly the trouble with hedges.

After she left you sat on the upturned crate with the sketchbook you kept under the till. You drew the pair the way you'd seen them on the canal bank in June: the lower bloom tipped forward, its outer petal folded over the upper one like a hand on a shoulder. You shaded the petals with the side of the pencil until the paper went grey and soft. The leaves you stippled with the tip, one dot at a time, because your grandmother said that was how you made a thing look like it had been rained on.

By noon the rain had thinned to a fine mist and the square smelled of diesel and crushed mint. Pearl came back for a third stem she didn't need and left it on the crate beside your sketchbook, the paper still dripping. Inside the drawing, the petals had gone soft at the edges, as if the wet had got into the ink. You didn't mind. Nothing on that stall stayed dry for long.