Traditional style colour tattoo of a crown above a red rose with green leaves and a stem, on a person's upper back between the shoulder blades.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crowned red rose with leaves on upper back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

A crown sits above a red rose with a pale centre, and a stem runs down to a pair of green leaves. The rose and crown are outlined in dark ink and shaded in red and grey, with the leaves in muted green. The tattoo is centred on the upper back, with red-nailed hands visible at the neck and shoulders against a dark background.

Traditional Back Crown Rose Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at Thornbury Halt could remember when the crown had first been set on the rose. The old signalman said it was his grandfather's doing, that any flower growing between two lines of iron needed a crown to keep it from forgetting it was a flower. So each spring the rose was cut from the bank beside the water tower and carried up to the box, and each spring a new crown was pressed onto it by hand, beaten flat from the brass of a broken lamp.

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One February a man in a grey coat got down from the late train with a leather case and asked for the rose. He said he had a wife in Leeds who had dreamed of it, and he would pay the signalman's wages for a year. The signalman, whose name was Owen Pell, said the rose stayed where it grew, and the man said the line was closing in March and the rose would be dug out with the sleepers anyway. Owen only poured the tea and said the rose would be there when the last train had gone.

The man sat on the bench until the first morning train was due. When it came up the valley, its lamp throwing a yellow fan across the frost, the rose in the window bent its head toward the track as though it were listening for something. Owen lifted the brass crown, turned it once in his palm, and set it back on the stem. The man stood, picked up his case, and walked up the platform without looking back, and the train took the rails on towards the sea.