Black and grey tattoo of a windswept tree with script quote beneath it, on the upper back.

Windswept tree with quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a tree bent by strong wind, with its foliage drawn as soft, dark, smudged strokes that stream to the right and scatter into small flecks. Beneath the trunk, three lines of cursive script read "we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy". The image is black and grey, with soft shading on the leaves and crisp, thin lettering, photographed from behind against a blurred background.

Lettering Botanical Back Tree Wind Leaves Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind off the estuary has been shoving at the awning since seven, and you have given up trying to keep the cuttings dry. Mrs Adair's cherry whips lie in their trays like wet pencils, and the gull on the fishmonger's sign has stopped pretending to be a weathervane. A man in a yellow cagoule wants a pear sapling and a lecture on grafting, and you give him both, because the rain makes people patient and the price of a cup of tea is high.

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Beyond the stalls, at the top of the car park, the old hawthorn bends east toward the town, every branch pointing the way the weather has pushed it for sixty years. The council keeps promising to fell it. Eli Price, who sells seed packets from the stall beside yours, swears the tree chose its shape. You tell him the wind chose it, and that a tree has no more say in its lean than a tenant has in the landlord. He laughs and says that is exactly the sort of thing a person says when they have never tried to stand straight in a gale.

At half past three Eli hands you a card with a number on it. His cousin has a dry unit in the city, a proper shop with a till that does not drip, and he needs someone who knows which plants will sell in February. It would be easy. You could pack up now and never again tie a tarpaulin to a railing with your teeth.

You look at the hawthorn, black against a sky the colour of wet slate, its foliage streaming sideways as if it were trying to fly off without its roots. Then you untie the awning ropes, let the canvas snap loose, and wrap the pear sapling in yesterday's newspaper, pressing the wet ink against its bark until the paper tears.