Black and grey botanical tattoo of two poppies and a seed pod running down the calf, with fine linework and stippled shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two poppies and seed pod on a calf

Botanical · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open poppy flowers joined by a slender stem, with a closed seed pod lower down and a dotted, fading tail at the base. The petals and seed heads are rendered with fine hatched linework and soft grey shading, with stippled dots along the stem. The design is in black and grey and fills the length of the lower leg against a warm wooden background.

Botanical Dotwork Calf Poppy Seed pod Flower Stem Leaf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The poppies came up on the spoil heap the spring after the cage stuck at Hollin Pit, which Mam said was the earth being sorry for itself. I was nine and not allowed up there, so naturally I went. Black shale everywhere, grit in your teeth, and then these papery red cups opening over the dust as if someone had dropped a handful of silk.

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I took a seed pod home in my cardigan pocket. Mr Akroyd at the chapel had a tin of them in his shed, dry as biscuits, and he said if you shook one the seeds ran like sand in an egg timer. I shook mine every night on the sill beside the kettle, counting the rattle, the way Dad counted the men coming up on the board by the lamp room.

In May I dug a bed by the coal shed where nothing had ever grown. Mam watched from the step with her arms folded and said the ground was poisoned, and I said so was the bread, and we both laughed, though neither of us really did. I pushed the seeds in with a teaspoon and patted them flat with my palm the way Dad patted a loaf.

Dad came up the lane on the first Saturday of June with his helmet under his arm and his face still grey at the creases where the pit wash never reached. He stopped at the gate. Three stems were already leaning over the path, two flowers open and one bud, and the smallest pod was swelling green at the base. He didn't say anything. He just bent, touched a petal with one black finger, and left a smudge on it, which I decided to keep.