Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch with a chain and two roses with leaves, running along a forearm.

Pocket watch and roses on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with a chain sits at the centre of the forearm, with two shaded roses and leaves above and below it. The linework is fine and the shading is soft, giving the roses and the watch face depth and dimension. The image is taken against a wooden background in neutral light, with the tattoo in clear focus.

Realism Botanical Forearm Pocket watch Clock Chain Rose Leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch had stopped at twenty past four, and I had not yet decided whether to wind it or leave it be. My grandfather had kept it in his waistcoat pocket for fifty years, the chain looped through the buttonhole the way other men carry a pen. I drove it out along the Carrow road in a dented utility truck with a cracked windscreen, a jam jar of dried roses from his back fence rolling against my boot every time the tarmac gave out.

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The road ran straight for ninety miles without a bend, the heat shimmering off the salt pans until the horizon looked like water. Somewhere past the old rail spur, a tin sign for Dunmore Siding leaned out of the scrub, and a tea shack stood beside it with a rosebush planted in a paraffin drum. Ada Penhale ran the place. She was the stationmaster's widow, and she had been pouring tea for truckers since before I was born.

She looked at the watch in my palm for a long time without touching it. Then she reached under the counter and brought out a clock of her own, its glass cracked, its hands stuck at the same minute. "He came through on the Tuesday train," she said. "Said he'd meet me on the platform at half four. I waited, and the clock stopped before he got off."

I didn't tell her that he had never once been on time for anything. I wound the watch on the counter, and it began to tick, small and certain, as if it had only been waiting for someone to stop pretending. I set it against her clock, and when the second hand swept past the twelve, I finally let it run on.