A red rose with black shading in a traditional style on the upper arm of a seated man in a grey t-shirt and black ripped jeans, with a gold watch on his wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose tattoo on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A man sits with his forearms resting on his knees, showing a red rose tattoo with black outlines and shading on his upper left arm. A partly visible dark tattoo sits on his right upper arm, and he wears a gold watch with a black face. The image is taken from above, with a grey t-shirt, black ripped jeans and a paved ground filling the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad never let anyone prune the rose over the back arch, not even Mum, and she had opinions on everything. He said a rose wants arguing with, not coddling. So every February I went out in his old wellies with the secateurs he'd sharpened on the back step, cut back what he would have cut, and every March the bush came up angrier than before.

Keep reading

The summer he went into hospital, Mr Okonedo leaned over the fence and said the bush looked ready to give up. I told him it was only waiting. The two of them had a standing bet over who would see the first bloom for the village show, and I had promised to keep the bush alive until one of them won. Dad had put his money on the rose. Mr Okonedo had put his on me, and I didn't yet know whether he was being kind.

In the second week of July the first bud split at the top of the arch, red as a stop sign and creased like wet silk. I cut it at dawn, wrapped the stem in a damp tea towel and drove it to the ward with the seatbelt pulled across it like a child. Dad looked at it for a long time without speaking. Then he said the petals were a shade too dark, and that was how I knew he was pleased.

The following spring I took a cutting from the arch and pushed it into a pot of grit by the back door. Mr Okonedo asked what I meant to do with it. I said I was waiting for it to argue back.

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