Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a pocket watch with Roman numerals set within a peach flower and green leaves on the back of a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch and flower on the back of a hand

Neo-trad · Hand · Colour · Photo

A pocket watch with Roman numerals and a pale blue face sits at the centre of a large peach and orange flower, with green leaves spreading across the top. The design uses bold black outlines and soft blended shading in pink, orange, green and teal. The tattoo fills the back of the hand, with the watch placed slightly off centre and the flower petals wrapping around its edges.

Neo-trad Hand Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch came in on a Tuesday, wrapped in a handkerchief that smelled of diesel and marmalade. Mr Okonedo from the chandlery had carried it up the hill himself and set it on our counter as if it might go off. Father disliked customers who would not give their names, so he left the thing face up under the lamp and went to fetch his loupe, and I was the one who opened the back.

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Inside the lid someone had pressed a petal, orange gone brown at the edges, and beneath it the engraving read only R.T. to M., 1931. The movement was tired. The Roman numerals had been repainted so many times the enamel stood proud of the dial, and the hands had stopped at twenty to four. I cleaned out a lifetime of harbour grit with a brush no wider than an eyelash, and when I wound it the balance caught and held, tick, tick, as though it had only been waiting for someone to ask.

Father said we could not sell it without a name, and Mr Okonedo never came back for it, so it stayed on the sill above the bench where the morning light lit the pale blue face. A fortnight later a woman came in about her mother's kitchen clock. She saw the watch and went quiet, then said that Ronnie had given it to Mab the summer before the boats went out, and that it had always run fast on the hill.

I set it right that afternoon by the harbour bell. She closed her hand around it, petal and all, and I watched her go down the cobbles until the crowd on the quay swallowed her grey coat.