Colour traditional tattoo on an upper arm showing a green raptor head with open jaws, two red roses with green leaves, and the words Life uh finds a way.

Raptor head and red roses with lettering

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A green dinosaur head with open jaws and a yellow eye sits above two red roses with green leaves and small buds. Bold black outlines define the forms, with soft dotwork stippling around the roses and the base of the design. The words LIFE UH...FINDS A WAY run in a curve beneath the dinosaur, and the design sits on the outer upper arm against plain skin.

Traditional Dotwork Upper arm Dinosaur Rose Leaves Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rose came up through the car park at Dunmore Street the same week the council switched off half the lamps on level three. Nobody had planted it. I found it at two in the morning, a red bloom shouldering through a crack beside bay nine, its stem bent like it had been pushing for a month and was not about to stop. I was supposed to be counting the barrier logs, not stooping over a flower with my torch, but Pat from the cleaning contract had already called it a nuisance, so I suppose I felt I ought to have an opinion.

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The second night there were two roses, one by the stairwell and one bunched against the kerb, and a smell of wet earth where none should have been. On the third night I heard something click behind the drain grate by the ramp. When I shone the torch down there was a green head resting on the bars, all open jaw and bright yellow eye, watching the nearest rose the way my nan used to watch a pie cooling on the sill. It did not bite me. It sniffed, sneezed a small grey puff, and sank back into the dark.

Gran used to say life finds a way about dandelions in the guttering and blackbirds in the chimney. I never understood what she meant until the council men came with their jackhammers on the Thursday. They drilled one ramp, then another, and somehow the roses were always a yard ahead of them, pushing up through the new tarmac as if the ground had been waiting.

On Friday morning the foreman stood at the grate with his hard hat in his hand and said nothing for a long time. Then he took a photograph, put the hat back on, and waved the crew off. I unbolted the grate that night so the thing could come and go as it pleased. Nobody asked me why, and I did not tell them.