Traditional style tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder showing a red rose, a pocket watch with Roman numerals and outlined roses.

Rose and pocket watch sleeve on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman wears a black top while a tattoo covers her upper arm and shoulder. The design includes a red rose with green leaves at the top, a pocket watch with Roman numerals in the centre, and two outlined roses with leaves below. Most of the piece is black linework with little shading, and only the top rose has colour, so it may be partly finished.

Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Rose Pocket watch Clock face Roman numeral Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has come down the Gap a week early, and the post still has to reach Ardtorran before the valley road shuts. You stand in the lee of the hut with the satchel across your chest and open the pocket watch your aunt pressed into your hand at the door. Its hands say twenty to four. They have said twenty to four since morning, which means the glass is cracked or the winding is slack, and either way you cannot trust it to tell you how long you have.

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Your aunt walked this pass for forty years and never once trusted a watch. She trusted the rose. Every spring she pinned a red bloom from the bush by the chapel door into the hut window, and when the petals browned, the season was over and the men could come down. Last month the bush was bare. You cut a stem from it anyway, a foolish thing, black at the edges, and tucked it into your collar where it has been rubbing your neck raw all afternoon.

The track bends north at the second cairn. You count the cairns the way she taught you, one, two, and at the third you stop, because the cloud has opened just enough to show the valley lights below, small as the numerals on the dial. Someone has left a lamp burning in the window at Ardtorran. You take the watch out, shake it once against your palm, and watch the second hand jerk forward, stubborn and certain, the first thing today that has told you the truth.

You don't wind it. You let it run down into the slope with you, one step at a time, the stem warm against your throat.