Colour tattoo of a pink rose with green stem, leaves and a falling petal, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink rose with falling petal on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A pink rose with a green stem and two leaves runs diagonally down the forearm, with a dotted pink trail and a single detached petal falling from its base. The rose has soft pink shading and fine dark outlines, while the stem and leaves are rendered in teal green. The plain pale skin and blurred dark patterned background keep the focus on the tattoo.

Botanical Forearm Rose Petal Stem Leaf Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rose on the east wall had started dropping petals on the Tuesday my brother came back from Leeds, and Mrs Okonedo next door swore it was my fault for pruning in the wrong month. I didn't argue. I was too busy counting. Each morning there were fewer pink heads on the bush and more petals lying across the flags, one every yard or so, as if someone had been walking away from the garden and dropping them on purpose.

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Dad grew that rose from a cutting he took from a churchyard in Hull, the year before he left. He never said why he chose it, only that it would outlast the house. I followed the trail with a trowel and a paper bag, past the water butt, under the gate and out into the lane where the dog walkers went. At the end of it, pressed flat against the kerb, was a single petal that had already gone brown at the edges.

My brother was sitting on the wall at the bottom of the lane with his coat open, not looking up. He said the petals were a joke he and Dad used to share, a way of saying where you were without saying it. I had forgotten. I sat beside him, picked the brown one off the kerb and put it in my pocket. We did not talk about the house. We watched the lane fill with evening traffic, and every so often a petal came down from the wall above us, slow as a sigh, and landed between our feet.

On the way home I stopped at the gate and counted what was left on the bush. Nine heads. I left them alone. Some things you let finish on their own terms, and some you follow home.