Black and grey realism tattoo of a wolf's head framed by fine line peonies, poppies and a sunflower, placed across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wolf head with flowers on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A wolf's head faces forward at the centre of the design, with shaded fur, pale highlights and detailed eyes and nose. Surrounding it, fine line outlines of peonies, poppies, a sunflower and leaves form a loose wreath that fades into the skin at the edges. The work is in black and grey, with the wolf shaded in soft greys and the flowers left as open linework and light stippling.

Realism Botanical Back Wolf Flower Peony Poppy Sunflower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hetty, The wolf came down from the high pasture the week the poppies opened, and I did not tell Father, because he would have gone after it with the musket. Instead I left the back door of the still room open and a bowl of scraps on the step, the way Mother used to leave milk for the cat that never came.

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It came every night after that, grey as the frost on the gate, and sat in the lane with its ears forward, watching the kitchen window. Its eyes were the colour of wet slate. I stopped being frightened by the second week. Once I stood in the doorway with the lamp and it did not run. It looked at me the way the old vicar looked at a hymn he had sung too many times, as though I were something it had decided to keep.

The sunflowers in the lower bed had gone to seed by then, and the peonies Mother planted for the wedding were over, their heads hanging like wet paper. Still, the wolf seemed to bring the garden with it. Petals came in on its coat every morning, one red poppy caught in the ruff of its neck, and I swept them off the flagstones before the men came up from the mill.

On the last night of the month the lane was empty. I went out in my nightdress with the bowl and found only a ring of flattened grass and, pressed into the mud beside the gatepost, a single sunflower head, heavy and gold. I have it pinned above the range. Father has not asked where it came from. I think he has seen the wolf too, and has decided, as I have, that some things are kinder left unexplained. Your loving sister, Agnes.