Hand-drawn design of two red poppies with black outlines and yellow centres, with German script reading Alle, die Sie benötigen, ist Liebe between them.

Two red poppies with German script

Botanical · Colour · Flash

Two red poppies are drawn in loose, outlined strokes with dark linework and shaded red petals, one above and one below a line of cursive German script. Each flower has a yellow centre with dark stamens. The composition is simple and open, with the script running diagonally across the white background.

Botanical Poppy Flower Script Love

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Jonas, the rain has sat on the Wochenmarkt since seven and the awning over my stall sags like a wet sail. I sold nothing until the woman with the grey plait came back. Last month she bought a bunch of poppies and asked me to wrap them in newspaper, and she folded the pages so the print faced inward. I didn't ask why. Some customers want their business kept out of sight.

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Today she bought just two, loose, the stems already snapped short. She counted her coins onto my tin lid one at a time, and they were warm from her pocket. "One for the wall at the church, and one for the bakery window," she said, "where the girl with flour on her cuffs works and never smiles." Then she tapped the paper with a gloved finger and read the words pencilled on the card tucked under the bunch: Alle, die Sie benötigen, ist Liebe. All you need is love. Her husband wrote it on the back of a ration card in 1946, she said, and she has never found a better line in any hymnbook.

I thought of you then, because you always said the worst letters are the ones that ask for nothing. I told her the stems would keep if she changed the water at the church tap. She laughed and said the tap had been dry since spring, so she would carry a jar. Then she walked off under her umbrella, the newspaper pressed flat against her chest so the rain wouldn't reach the petals.

Ilse sold me a loaf this morning and asked if I was writing to someone. I said yes. Come home before the poppies go over. The rain is easing now, and the market lamps are coming on one by one down the row.