Black and grey realism tattoo on a forearm showing a dove in flight above a pocket watch with Roman numerals and a rose below.

Dove, pocket watch and rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A dove with spread wings sits at the top of the forearm, above a pocket watch with Roman numerals and a small script word on its face. A rose is shown at the base of the design, with soft shading across its petals. The piece is rendered entirely in black and grey ink with smooth gradients and fine detail throughout.

Realism Forearm Dove Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Rose Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch had stopped at twenty past four, and Ellen Dorrat swore it was the minute her husband's boat went under the Skerra rocks in 1961. I didn't argue. I took it from her on the slip that Thursday morning, turned the crown until the hands gave a small reluctant click, and felt it start again against my palm, cold and faintly heavier than a watch has any right to be.

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She had brought a shoebox with her. Inside, a grey dove lay in a nest of tea towels, one wing folded wrong, and she had nursed it since March from a bird that flew into her kitchen window. She wanted it let go from the harbour wall while the ferry pulled out, so the boy on board would see something rise over the water. Her son was coming home for the funeral. She wanted the watch in his coat pocket by the time he stepped off, so he would know what time it had been when she last looked at the sea.

The dove would not fly. It sat on the bollard turning its head at the gulls, and the ferry horn sounded twice, and I thought she would give up on it. Then she lifted the box herself and tipped it, and the bird went up sideways, one wing dragging, over the roses that grew wild along the sea wall. It cleared the wall by a yard. I watched it until the rocks took it from view.

I put the watch in my own pocket, not hers. I wanted to keep it going a little longer before I handed it over.