Realism style tattoo of two pink roses with green leaves and a small black script line, on a woman's shoulder and upper chest.

Pink roses and script on the shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of two pink roses with green leaves, shaded with soft gradients and fine highlights, sitting on the shoulder and upper chest. A small black script line appears to read 'Enjoy the little things' beside the flowers. The ink is mainly colour, with the lettering in black, and the framing cuts off the wearer's face and focuses on the tattoo against a grey striped top.

Realism Botanical Shoulder Rose Leaves Flower Script Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Pargeters' roses were past their best by the end of July, and Mrs Pargeter could no longer tell which were which, so it fell to me to tell her. I went up the back lane every Saturday with my mother's scissors in my apron pocket and a jam jar for the heads. "Smell before you cut," she told me the first morning, sitting on the step with her hands folded over her stick. "If there's nothing in it, it's not worth the bin."

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She had planted the bed the year her husband came back from Dunkirk, a row of pink ones that bloomed in two shades, the outer petals almost papery and the middle cupped tight like something being kept. Most afternoons she talked and I listened. She talked about Co-op prices and the vicar's wife's scent. She talked about a card propped on the kitchen windowsill, written in pencil in her square hand: Enjoy the little things.

"I wrote that when I was frightened," she said, "so I'd have something to look at while the kettle boiled."

In September my father lost his place at the foundry and we moved across the county to a rented terrace with a yard the size of a tablecloth. On my last Saturday Mrs Pargeter pressed a cutting into my hands, a woody stem wrapped in wet newspaper and tied with garden twine. "Put it where you'll see it from the sink," she said. "Roses take three years to forgive you for moving them. Be patient."

The cutting took, though it took its time. Two summers later it bore two blooms, one pale and one nearly red, and I stood at the sink with my hands in the washing-up water and looked at them for longer than I needed to.