Traditional style tattoo of a red rose with black shading and a dagger running vertically through it, placed centrally on the chest below a black bra top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dagger and rose on the chest

Traditional · Chest · Colour · Photo

A dagger with a red-and-black hilt runs vertically down the centre of the torso, with a red rose set on its blade. Dark leaves with red-tipped points surround the rose, and the bold black outlines and solid fills are typical of traditional tattooing. The ink is shown in saturated red and black against plain skin, with a black top and trousers framing the image.

Traditional Chest Dagger Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The rain has kept up since Tuesday, so the gulls have taken to sitting on the chandlery roof and shouting at nobody. Mum sends her love and says to tell you the lamp in the back window is the one you hung, and she keeps it lit whatever the oil man says about cost. I have been down at Harker's yard every afternoon, learning to scrape a hull the way you showed me, though my hands blister worse than yours ever did.

Harker finally paid what he owed on the Marigold, and I have used it to buy the old rope locker off the Bridge Street sale. Inside I found your knife, the one with the red-threaded grip, wrapped in oilcloth and smelling of tar. I have cleaned the blade and set it on the mantel beside the tin of buttons. I will not carry it down to the quay, I promise, but I wanted you to know it came home.

The rose you had scratched on your forearm the summer before you shipped out has gone dark at the edges, and Mrs Pell says it will look finer for the years. I told her you would be angry if she touched it. She laughed and said that was the point of a sailor's mark, to annoy the sea.

Write soon. The tide tables are pinned by the door, and I have marked the spring ones in red so you know when to look for the lamp.

Yours, Nell