Black and grey realism tattoo of an hourglass with a skull inside and a rose behind it, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hourglass, skull and rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

An hourglass with a skull sitting in its lower bulb stands beside a large rose with a curled leaf above it. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft greys and highlights giving the glass, metal frame and petals a three-dimensional look. The design fills the forearm in a tall composition against a plain background of skin and a dark sleeve.

Realism Forearm Hourglass Skull Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Harrowgate House has been broken since Tuesday, so you take the stairs with a bag of shopping in each hand and count the landings because counting is easier than thinking. Fourteen floors. Mrs Okafor on eleven has left her door open again, and the smell of cloves follows you up past twelve.

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Your nan's hourglass sits on the windowsill of flat 14C, brass caps dulled, the glass gone faintly yellow from years of kitchen steam. She bought it from a market stall in Blackpool the summer before the flats went up, and every Sunday she turned it over before the roast so the potatoes got their full minutes. Nobody has turned it since the funeral. The sand has settled into the lower bulb in a grey heap that, when the light catches it, looks like a small skull someone forgot to clear away.

Dean from the flat below brought up a rose on Thursday, wrapped in the sports pages of the local paper. He said he'd found it in the bins behind the florist on Crescent Road and couldn't bear to leave it there. It is already dropping petals onto the sill, one pale curl at a time. You set the shopping down, turn the glass, and watch the first grains begin their slow argument with gravity.

By the time the last of it drops you have put the kettle on, rung the council about the lift, and found the spare key your nan hid in the tin of custard powder. You leave the hourglass running on the sill. Somewhere far below, the lift shudders into life, and the whole block seems to breathe out.