Black and grey shaded rose with leaves and script reading Sweethearts Forever, tattooed on the outer thigh in a traditional style.

Black and grey rose on the thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large shaded rose in full bloom sits on the outer thigh, with three leaves around its base and the script words Sweethearts Forever running along the lower right edge. The petals are built up with dark outlines and smooth grey shading, and the leaves have fine hatched lines. The image is a close, slightly angled shot of the thigh, with a blue patterned rug and wooden panelling in the blurred background.

Traditional Thigh Rose Leaves Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the Bramley trees are heavy this year and the wasps have found the windfalls, so I've given up on the crates and left them rotting in the long grass. Mother asked after you again at tea. I told her the sea doesn't keep post, which is true enough.

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I went up to the old wall yesterday with the secateurs. The rose you planted the spring before you left has gone nearly black, its petals folded in on themselves like a fist that won't open, and the leaves have turned the colour of rain on slate. I cut three stems from the deepest part of the bush and wrapped them in wet newspaper the way Father taught us, so they wouldn't wilt on the walk down.

You'll remember the bench by the gate and the penknife we used to carve our initials with. You made me promise on that bench, though you had no business asking. Sweethearts Forever, you said, as if it were a tide table you'd copied out and meant to keep. I've kept it, the way a mouse keeps a crust. This morning I grafted the cuttings onto the crab apple stock by the pond and bound them with raffia, and I pushed a lolly stick into the soil at the root with the words written on it in pencil.

If it takes, there'll be black roses on a sour tree by next summer. If it doesn't, you'll have to come home and admit it was your fault. Write soon, or I'll tell the wasps where you are. Your loving sister, Nell.