Realism tattoo of red roses and a silver pocket watch with Roman numerals on the outer thigh.

Red roses and pocket watch on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large realistic tattoo covers the outer thigh, showing several red roses with green leaves framing a silver pocket watch with ornate engraved casing and a hanging chain. The watch face has Roman numerals, a blue inner ring and small script lettering, and the shading gives the metal and petals strong three-dimensional form. Bright red ink dominates the roses while the watch and background shading are in greys and black, set against a plain red-tiled wall and dark seat.

Realism Thigh Rose Pocket watch Clock face Roman numeral Chain Leaves Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The silver watch had stopped at ten to four, the hour Mags Hollis always said a kettle sounded best, and I was still fishing it out of the glovebox when the heat began to shiver off the mesa road. I'd bought it from a man in Tucson who swore it had belonged to a railway clerk. It had a chain like a dropped necklace and a face the colour of old milk, Roman numerals crowding the rim, and a little script curled through the middle that read Time for Tea.

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Mags ran the roadside stop at Coyote Flats, a tin hut with a cracked urn and a row of red roses she grew in ammunition crates, watered from a barrel that ran dry every August. Every trucker who pulled in got a cup, and every cup came with a question about the hour. She never answered it straight. She'd tap the watch on the counter, say it was always teatime somewhere, and that the trick was to be the one holding the pot.

The hut was shut when I got there. The roses hung their heads over the crates, petals dropping onto the sand like spilt paint, and a note was pinned to the door with a tack: Gone to find the hour. Back when the kettle sings. I sat on the step for a long time with the watch in my palm, listening to nothing but the wind and the tick of the cooling engine. Then I wound the crown, just once, and set the hands to ten to four.

Behind the tin wall, a kettle began to sing, though there was no one to light it. The roses lifted their heads one by one, red as a dare, and I went in to pour.