Black line drawing of a weeping willow tree with a ribbon banner reading BEND DON'T BREAK wrapped around its trunk, in a tattoo flash style.

Willow tree with Bend Don't Break banner

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a weeping willow with long drooping branches, dotted leaf details and curling roots at the base. A ribbon banner wraps around the trunk and carries the words BEND DON'T BREAK in capitals. The linework is uniform and bold with no shading, and the composition is centred on the tree with the banner across its middle.

Botanical Tree Banner Lettering Root Swirl Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been poling the narrowboat Marigold through the flood cut since before light, and the water has got into the coal and the stove has gone out twice. At Tench Lock the gate paddles are seized, so you tie off to the old willow on the offside, the one your uncle called the Drowned Man because it has leaned over the cut for longer than anyone remembers. Its branches trail into the brown water like wet rope.

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The wind comes up from the south-west at noon and the river swells a foot in an hour. Debris turns in the current: a pallet, a child's wellington, a whole length of hedge. The Marigold strains at her line and the willow takes the weight, bowing until its crown brushes the towpath. You lay a hand on the trunk and feel the shudder run through the bark, and you remember Uncle Ray saying a stiff thing snaps while a supple one lives to see the spring.

By evening the flood crests and begins to drop. The Marigold rides level again, the paddles finally shift with a groan of iron, and you climb onto the roof to look back. The willow has not split. Its long branches hang lower than before, combed straight by the current, and the leaves lie plastered on the water in a ribbon of green.

You untie the line. The willow lets go of the boat and springs upright with a slap of water, and the wake spreads out across the cut, rocking the reeds on both banks until the whole channel is moving.