Colour tattoo of a red rose and a teal and orange sugar skull on the outer thigh, with black ornamental linework to the left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose and sugar skull on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A close view of a thigh showing a large red rose in the foreground with a teal and orange sugar skull behind it. Black and grey scrollwork or ornamental linework extends down the left side of the leg. The rose has soft shading and the skull is bold and graphic, set against tanned skin and a denim shorts hem at the top of the frame.

Neo-trad Thigh Rose Sugar skull Skull Scrollwork Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mule will not take the second switchback until you stop singing at it, so you stop, and the wind comes up the pass smelling of wet stone and somebody's far-off woodsmoke. Your sister's sugar skull rides in the left pannier, wrapped in a flour sack gone grey with road dust. Through the leather you can feel it knock against the tin cups with every step, teal paint on one cheek, orange on the other, the swirls on its brow chipped where the rain got in.

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At the summit the customs hut is a stone box with a green iron gate, its scrollwork rusted into lace. The guard unwraps the sack on his trestle and studies the skull for a long time. 'Sugar is taxed by weight,' he says. 'Is it sugar?' You tell him it is only what is left of a promise, and he laughs, then stops laughing, because you have not smiled. He turns it over. He counts the dried marigold petals stuck in its crown. He writes nothing down and pushes it back across the trestle with two fingers, as if it might still be warm.

Going down, you cut a rose from the thorn bush beside the gate, a dark red one that has survived the frost, and you tuck it into the sack beside the skull. The mule stops again at the top of the first bend. You let it. Below you the valley is filling with lamps, one window after another, and the path ahead curls like the iron ornament on the gate, patient and decorative, leading somewhere you have never been.