Black and grey pencil drawing of three roses and two leaves with scrolling swirls, a tattoo design sketch with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pencil sketch of roses with swirls

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of three roses in different stages of bloom, with a bud at the upper left and two open blooms on the right and lower centre. Leaves and fine curling swirls frame the flowers. The shading is soft and graded, with dark accents in the rose centres and leaves and light areas on the petals, all in grey graphite on a pale background.

Botanical Rose Rose bud Leaves Swirl Flower Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The gate at Halloran Lane has finally rusted shut, so I climbed over it this morning with the secateurs in my teeth, the way Mum always told us not to. The frost was thick on the lawn and the roses were black with it, but three of the old ones still had buds standing up stubborn as shut fists. I cut them for the kitchen table, where they will be dead by Sunday, and I thought you would want to know.

I found your sketchbook under the stairs while I was boxing up the coats. The page with the roses is the one you did the summer before you left: three blooms at different stages, one bud tucked into the top corner as if it was trying to hide. You shaded the petals so the light sat on them, and you curled those swirls around the leaves like the ironwork on the gate. I stood in the hall for a long time holding it up to the window.

Mum never liked you drawing on the back of the gas bills. She said it was waste. I think she kept every one of them, and I think you know that now.

So I am sending the page on, because it belongs in your hands and not under the stairs with the hoover. The post office in Lerwick says a week. Keep the frost off it and keep it flat.

Love, Jo