Black and grey realism tattoo of two open roses with a rose bud and leaves on the side of a ribcage.

Black and grey roses on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Two open roses sit one above the other on the side of the ribcage, with a smaller rose bud and pointed leaves tucked between them. The roses are rendered in soft grey shading with fine detail in the petal folds, and the leaves are shaded dark against a smoky grey background. The palette is almost entirely black and grey, with only a faint hint of pink and green on the bud.

Realism Botanical Ribs Rose Rose bud Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Odell kept her cuttings in jam jars along the north wall of the allotment, and every March she made me go down on my knees in the wet and count the buds for her. Two open this year, she said, and one shy thing hiding behind them that won't show its colour till June. I told her roses don't keep to schedules. She told me neither did her husband, bless him, who went off to the Somme with a packet of seed potatoes and came home with a sweetheart's ribbon in his pocket and no interest in potatoes at all.

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The bramble cutting I'd brought from Hebden Bridge had rooted in a bucket of rainwater. She wanted it put into the bed by the gate, where the frost settled first, so it would learn to be hardy from the start. I dug the hole deeper than she asked. She watched me do it with her hands folded on the handle of her walking stick and said nothing, which in Mrs Odell meant she approved.

When the pale bud finally opened that June, it was the colour of a bruise going yellow, edged in green, and she sent me down the lane with it in a cup of water so that she could see it properly from her bed. She died in August with the window open. The bud had gone to seed by then, and I left the head on the stalk for the goldfinches, the way she taught me.

I still walk past the gate in March. The frost still settles there first, and the bramble still comes up through the grey gravel, stubborn and early, as if it has been counting the days too.