Botanical wisteria vine tattoo in purple and grey on a woman's shoulder, shoulder blade and upper arm, photographed from behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wisteria vine across shoulder and back

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A trailing wisteria vine with clusters of purple flowers and grey-green leaves runs from the shoulder blade over the top of the shoulder and down the upper arm. The leaves are shaded in grey with soft lines, while the flowers are filled with washes of lilac and purple. A pale yellow circle sits behind the upper leaves, and the skin shows a bare back with black bra straps.

Botanical Shoulder Back Upper arm Vine Flower Leaves Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats are already past the breakwater when you climb the ladder to cut the wisteria back from the gutter, because Mrs Pelling says the vine has been lifting the slates since March and she will not have another gale come through her kitchen. The flowers hang in long lilac strings, heavy with the wet, and every time the shears bite a stem a shower of petals drops down your collar.

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Below you the harbour wall is still grey, and the fleet is a scatter of small lights going out past the lighthouse. Your brother is on the Morwenna. He left at four without saying goodbye, the way he always does, and you have decided not to mind. Behind the bloom the sun is lifting pale and yellow over the stone, and the grey-green leaves catch it at their edges so the whole vine seems to be holding its breath.

Mrs Pelling calls up from the yard that the kettle has boiled twice. You tell her one more branch. The old stem has wound itself through the drainpipe like a fist, and when at last it gives, the whole trailing mass swings free and knocks against your shoulder, scattering blossom across the ladder rungs.

You leave the rest standing. By the time the Morwenna ties up at dusk, the wisteria will have pushed fresh shoots into the gap, because that is what it does, and Mrs Pelling will say you did well enough. You climb down with purple dust on your palms and look out at the water, where a single light is coming in slow and steady through the mouth of the harbour.