Pencil drawing of two open lilies in shaded black and grey on a white background, a botanical flash design with no body placement shown.

Two lilies in pencil shading

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

Two lily flowers overlap diagonally, one above and one below, each with its petals, central stamens and anthers drawn in dark pencil. The petals are shaded with soft graded tones and fine dark outlines, with light speckling on the inner petals. The image is monochrome on a plain white background, with the flowers filling most of the frame.

Botanical Lily Flower Petal Stamen Pencil drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, you're letting the rain in. Aye, that's the stall with the tarpaulin torn at one corner, and that's where my husband used to shout the price of lilies at anyone walking past the fish. He could shout a price so the whole market heard it. Fifty years I stood beside him, and not once did he sell a bloom for what it was worth.

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It was a wet March, the kind where the gutters run faster than the buyers walk. A lad came up the lane with his collar turned up and no coat, carrying a cardboard box with the flaps taped shut. He asked for two white lilies, the big ones with the dark pollen that leaves marks on your cuffs. My husband said they were dear. The lad said he had a coin and a promise. My husband took the coin and handed the promise back, which was a thing he did when he liked someone.

Here's the part they tell wrong. The lad wasn't buying for himself. He wanted one bloom set above the other, so the two faced each other across the dark like they'd been talking all morning and had got bored of waiting. He cut the stems himself with my kitchen knife, quick and clean, and tucked the petals back where the rain had flattened them. Then he walked off towards the station without looking back, and the box sat on my counter all afternoon, drip by drip.

When the rain eased I opened it. Pollen had dusted the card, dark as soot. I've kept the box. Some things you should keep, even when the market takes everything else.