Black line drawing of a rose with leaves and a small sprig, lightly shaded in soft pink, shown as a botanical tattoo design on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and leaves line drawing

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A rose bloom sits at the centre of a botanical design, surrounded by serrated leaves, long pointed leaves and a small sprig at the top. The outlines are dark and precise, with light pink shading across the petals and leaves. The design fills the frame on a pale sheet, with a red marker and a black fine-liner pen resting at the lower right.

Botanical Rose Leaves Flower Sprig Botanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By three in the morning the drug chart for bed nine has more roses on its back than anything printed on its front. I've drawn the same bloom four times, each one a little less wobbly, while the monitors chirp down the corridor and Gerry from cardiology eats crisps at the desk without offering any. Night shift teaches you to keep your hands busy. My mum drew roses on the backs of gas bill envelopes, and I think that's where I learned to press the outline in hard and leave the middle soft.

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Bed nine is Mr Halloran, eighty-one, who spent forty years on the Dunmore docks and still calls every nurse Sergeant. He has asked me twice whether the rose on the chart has thorns. I tell him yes. He says good, a flower without thorns is a bit of a liar. He is the only patient I've had who argues with a drawing. I add a sprig at the top, a little spray the way the old florists used to, and he taps the paper with a yellowed nail and says, that's the one.

At half four the rain stops and the vending machine starts its hum. The leaves are the hard part, the serrated ones that bite at the edge and the long narrow ones that droop like they're tired of holding on. I shade them pale pink with the red marker, wetting the nib on my tongue the way Mum never let me. Nobody else will look at this sheet.

When the day staff arrive, Mr Halloran is awake and has folded the chart into his top pocket. Keep the thorns, he says, and I leave the paper with him and walk out into a grey morning with a pen that has nothing left in it and nothing to do with my hands.