Colour tattoo of a red rose bud with green leaves and black swirling vines climbing up the ankle, shown in a close photograph of the skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose bud and vine on an ankle

Botanical · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A red rose bud sits on a green stem with several green leaves, and black curling tendrils wrap around the design. The rose has smooth, shaded red tones with highlights, while the leaves and stem use layered greens. The design runs diagonally up the ankle and lower leg, with the foot visible at the lower left of the frame.

Botanical Realism Ankle Rose Rose bud Vine Leaves Stem Swirl Tendril

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The council man says the balconies must be cleared by Friday, so you carry the pots down one at a time, the way you carried everything else up those fourteen flights. The rose goes last. It has been sulking all week, a single red bud pinched shut at the top of its green stem, and you have stopped expecting it to open before the lorries come.

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Your neighbour Dessie leans on the walkway rail with a mug of tea and tells you roses don't care about deadlines. He says it was Gerry who gave you the cutting, years back, when Gerry still had a stall on the market and a laugh you could hear from the car park. You have not told Dessie that the tendrils came up the railings the summer after the funeral, twisting through the gaps as though they had somewhere to be, and that you let them.

On Thursday you come up in the lift with the last pot tucked under one arm, and the bud has split. Not wide, just enough to show a dark red fold of petal, the colour of the cheap wine Gerry used to bring up on Sundays. The leaves are glossy from the morning rain. You set the pot on the walkway tiles and stand there longer than you mean to, watching the wind try and fail to pull the curls free of the railing.

You leave it where it is. Let the clipboards come on Friday and find it still open, its tendrils hooked through the railings like hands that will not let go.