Back view of a woman in a wide-brimmed hat with a red rose tattoo with dark outlines on her upper arm near the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red rose tattoo on upper arm, seen from behind

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman with long, sun-streaked blonde hair stands with her back to the camera, holding a brown wide-brimmed hat with both hands. A red rose with dark outlines and shading sits on her upper arm close to the shoulder, with some surrounding leaves or linework visible. The warm outdoor light and open-backed grey top keep the focus on the tattoo and the hat.

Traditional Upper arm Rose Flower Hat Long hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band at the Lantern Ballroom in Saltcombe finished the foxtrot before you had your breath back, and Dolly Perrin pressed a glass of lemonade into your hand and said the man by the pillar had been watching you since the interval. You didn't look. You had the rose then, barely a month old, and you kept your sleeve pulled down over it the way you'd keep a letter you didn't want read.

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Lenny Shand had inked it in the back room over the bait shop, with a machine he'd bought off a man in Plymouth and a bottle of red wine he insisted was for the ink. You'd meant to ask for a swallow, the thing every sailor wore, but you wanted something that couldn't leave, and your mother grew roses against the coal shed. He drew it freehand, dark outlines, leaves like spearheads, and when he'd finished he said, "Roses don't go anywhere, love. That's the trouble with them."

Halfway through the last waltz the man by the pillar crossed the floor with his cap in his hands, and you let him take your hand and tell you about the boat he'd bought in Brixham. Somewhere around the second turn you saw the doors open onto the prom, the wind lifting paper streamers off the balcony rail, and you knew you would be gone by the first tide.

Your coat was still on the hook by the cloakroom when you went back for it, your brown felt hat folded in the lining where you'd left it. You took the coat and left the hat. Dolly still had the lemonade jug, and when she called after you, you did not turn round, because you had already decided the rose could look after itself.