Forearm covered in botanical designs, including a black line-drawn rose, the words Smell the Roses, and pastel and gold floral clusters on the arm.

Floral sleeve with rose and script on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A bare forearm and upper arm show a line-drawn rose with fine black outlines and shading, plus script reading Smell the Roses and leafy scrolls at the lower left. Larger clusters of yellow and gold flowers and pink, red and teal blooms sit across the arm, with some metallic gold foil on the leaves and petals that suggests a temporary or transfer design. The image is a close, softly lit photo against a white top and bedding.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Rose Flower Leaves Script Bouquet Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The greenhouse at Hollins Farm had been shut since the spring frost, but Mara still kept the key on a loop of red wool in her apron pocket. She turned it over while her brother argued with the postmaster about a parcel that had come two weeks late and smelling of wet cardboard. Inside the parcel were forty bare-root rose cuttings wrapped in newspaper from a town neither of them had heard of until the seed merchant wrote from there. Somebody had labelled each bundle in careful capitals: SMELL THE ROSES, it said on the bottom crate, as if it were an instruction and not a joke.

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They planted them along the south wall in the rain, the earth clinging to their boots like wet bread. Her brother wanted to chase the merchant for a refund. Mara wanted to know who had written the label, and why they had thought a stranger's garden needed reminding. By dusk the cuttings were green-tipped and stubborn, and she found herself walking the wall with a torch, bending close to each one. She noticed the lemon-yellow buds forming at the crown of the bush nearest the gate, and the gold-edged leaves catching the light like foil on a sweet wrapper.

She left the gate unlatched that night, which she had never done in her life. In the morning the wool loop was gone from her pocket and a small paper tag lay on the step, folded once, in the same careful capitals. It read: NOW YOU HAVE TO KEEP THEM. She laughed out loud at the empty lane, then went out in her slippers to check the buds.