Black and grey botanical tattoo of wheat stalks and cornflowers on a forearm, overlapped by fine geometric triangle outlines.

Wheat and cornflowers with triangles on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bouquet of wheat stalks and cornflowers rises up the forearm, with stems and leaves drawn in fine black linework and shaded in soft greys. Overlapping outlined triangles sit beneath the flowers, creating a contrast between the organic plant forms and the sharp geometric lines. The photograph is taken against a wooden panel background with the arm filling the right side of the frame.

Botanical Geometric Forearm Wheat Bouquet Triangle Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Hollins House has been broken since March, so I climb the eleven floors with a carrier bag of compost on one hip and my grandfather's tin under my arm. Nobody on the stairwell asks what's in it. They assume rent, or a cat.

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The tin held seed from the farm outside Kettering where he worked until the combine took his job. Wheat first, a fistful of grains he kept in a jam jar, then the cornflowers, blue as a school jumper, that grew at the edge of every field he ever mowed. He said they were weeds. He said it the way other men said they loved someone.

I sow them in the window box on the balcony rail, the one the council's painters missed. The wheat sulks. The cornflowers come up in a ragged line, and by June they are leaning over the railing towards the car park as if they want to see who is coming. Mrs Okafor from flat 14 asks if she can have one for her kitchen. I give her three, wrapped in newspaper.

The triangles came from the estate itself. Every block has the same gables stacked against the sky, sharp as cut card, and my grandfather used to sketch them on the back of envelopes, fitting his stalks between the points. The last summer he could still walk, we stood at the rail and he pointed at the sharp edges and said, there, that's where the wheat goes. I thought he was being poetic. Now I think he was giving directions.