Black and grey realism tattoo of two sunflowers with leaves and stems on the outer thigh.

Two sunflowers on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two sunflowers, one large in the foreground and one smaller behind it, with serrated leaves and a twisting stem. The centres are densely stippled and the petals are shaded with soft grey gradients and fine vein lines. The work is in black and grey, with the warm skin tone showing through the lighter petals, and the design fills the frame from the top left to the lower edge.

Realism Botanical Thigh Sunflower Flower Leaves Stem Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The seeds came aboard in a tea tin bought off a woman on the Lisbon quay, who swore they would take root in salt air. You carry the bucket aft every morning before the watch changes, because Haskett the cook has forbidden you to leave it on the foredeck where the spray gets at it. Eleven weeks south of the Azores, the big head stands taller than the galley door, and the small one, which came up from a seed you dropped by accident, leans into its shoulder as if it were listening.

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You measure them against the mainmast each Sunday with a knife notch, the way your mother measured you against the scullery door in Penzance. Nobody aboard mentions that the wind has backed three points or that the captain has been chewing the stem of his pipe for two days. Your job is the bucket and the watering, and the water is the drinking ration you should not be spending.

Off the Horn the sky turns the colour of pewter and the big head drops, its petals hanging like wet laundry. You think it has given up. Then the sun breaks through at four bells and the whole face swings round to the light, slowly, the way the compass card settles. The smaller one follows it, and you understand they have been turning all voyage toward whatever you were not looking at.

You lash the stem to the rail with a strip torn from your spare shirt, so it can keep its face to the light while you sleep below. Haskett asks what you are doing. You tell him the flower needs a steadier deck. He nods as though that is a sailor's reason, and for him it is.