Traditional style flash design of a hand holding a bouquet of red roses, teal and yellow flowers and green leaves, with a gold tag reading for you.

Hand holding a rose and flower bouquet

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A pale hand rises from the bottom of the image, holding a bouquet centred on a large red rose with a smaller red bud above it. Teal five-petalled flowers, yellow blossoms and dark green leaves fill the bouquet, and a gold tag with black script hangs from a red string on the left. Bold black outlines, flat fills and simple shading in red, green, teal and yellow give the design a classic look on a plain off-white background.

Traditional Botanical Rose Flower Bouquet Hand Leaves Script Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The tag came off the bouquet in the wind this morning, so I've knotted a fresh length of red string through its hole and pinned it above the till, where you'll see it when you're back. I wrote "for you" on it in the good ink, the one Mrs Penhallow says is too fancy for card. The red roses on the quay were the last of the season, and I had to beg Ada at the market for the teal anemones with the black eyes, the ones that look like they're listening.

The rain came in sideways on Thursday and the harbour wall went under. I carried the flowers down to the slipway anyway, the way you asked, and a man in a yellow oilskin took them from my hand without looking at the petals. He said the boat was called Marigold Quay, which I thought was a joke until I saw the name in gold on her stern. He pressed a coin into my palm and I didn't give it back. It's in my coat pocket now, warm from my hand.

I'm keeping the tag here on its red string, so there's something of the bouquet waiting when you come up the hill. Ada says a rose goes on opening in water for days after you think it's finished, so the bud at the top might still be unfurling somewhere off the coast. Mind it doesn't open without you.

Come home on the spring tide. The drawer under the till holds a dozen letters I never sent, and I'd rather read you this one aloud.

Yours, Nell