Colour botanical tattoo of red and pink poppies with buds and green leaves across a woman's shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vintage poppy bouquet on the shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A cluster of poppies in red, pink, orange and cream rises from the bottom of the upper arm towards the shoulder, with closed buds and green stems and leaves. The petals are shaded with soft gradients and fine detail in the centres, giving a painted, vintage botanical print look. The bouquet is set against bare skin, with a white lace top and blonde hair visible at the edge of the frame.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Poppy Flower Bouquet Bud Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

4.10 am. The ovens are up to heat and the flour has found its way into the grout again. Mr Okafor's van is late, so I am weighing poppy seed by hand on the old brass scales, a teaspoon at a time. Nan kept hers in a biscuit tin with a faded lid, a bunch of poppies gone soft at the edges, red fading to cream. She said you could tell a good baker by how she handled the seed, lightly, as if it might object.

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Every Sunday for thirty years she plaited a loaf with it, and every spring she sent me up the railway embankment with a paper bag to gather seed heads before the council mowed. The pods rattle when they are ready, like dice in a cup. This morning I walked up the cutting in the dark with a torch and found the wall already cleared, the poppies bent over in the frost, every dry head snapped clean and laid in a neat row along the coping stone.

Beside the row sat a jam jar, and tucked under its lid was a folded slip of paper in careful capitals: TOOK WHAT I NEEDED. LEFT THE REST FOR THE BEES. I stood there longer than I had time for. Then I walked back down the hill, left a cob loaf wrapped in a tea towel on the wall for whoever came next, and told myself the council could mow what it liked.

4.52 am. The van is at the kerb. The seed is weighed, and the tin is back on the shelf where Nan kept it, lid pressed down, the bunch of poppies facing out.