Colour rose and grey shaded skull tattoo with leaves on the upper back near the shoulder blade, in a realistic style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and skull on the shoulder blade

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A red rose sits at the top left of the design, partly overlapping a grey skull with a shaded face and small leaves or foliage around the eye sockets and jaw. The skull uses soft grey shading while the rose has bright red colour with darker tones in its petals. The tattoo is photographed on bare skin across the upper back and shoulder, with a pale pink strap visible at the bottom edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The red rose you left me has finally flowered, the one that came up through the north wall after the frost. Mr Pryce says it shouldn't have survived the winter, which is what he used to say about you. I dug around its roots on Tuesday and turned up a skull, small and grey as a river pebble, with a tangle of leaves grown through the eye holes. I have put it on the windowsill beside your letter from Carlisle, where the customs man stamped it twice and said the ink was still wet.

You will say I am being morbid. Mother always said a garden is only a graveyard that remembers its manners. I have kept the bones because they seemed to want keeping, and because the rose is so bright it looks as if it is trying to make up for the rest of the bed.

The border at Gretna was shut when the lorries came through, so the cutting you sent may have gone soft in the post. If the parcel reaches you and the stems are black, do not bother to tell me. I will know from the way you write my name.

Come home at Michaelmas if the crossing is open. Bring the skull back, or leave it, I do not mind which. Just bring whatever you have grafted onto yourself over there, so I can see whether it has taken.

Love, Anne

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