Black and grey fine line outline of a rose with a bow on the upper back shoulder, photographed from behind with the wearer facing a wall of flash sheets.

Rose with bow on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A person seen from behind shows a single-outline tattoo of a rose with a bow above it on the upper back shoulder. The linework is thin and even, with no shading inside the petals, and the design is in black ink only. The photograph is taken indoors in black and white, with a white top, dark hair and a wall of tattoo flash and a large dragon drawing in the background.

Fine line Botanical Shoulder Rose Bow Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The carrier left Ada Wren at the crossroads with a tin trunk and a length of blue ribbon knotted round its handle, and she walked the last nine miles of the Salt Ridge road because nobody stops for a woman carrying a trunk that rattles like loose teeth. By the time she reached Sallow Wells her lips were cracked and the ribbon had gone the colour of dust.

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Sallow Wells had one painter, a man called Joss Hallam, who lettered the sides of freight wagons and drew roses on the tailgates of anyone who could pay him in water. He drew only the outline. Ada watched him work for three evenings before she asked why he never coloured them in. 'A petal with shadow in it is a petal pretending to be lit,' he said. 'I like a rose to let the light through.'

She stayed through the dry season, hauling water for his mules and keeping his brushes clean. In March a dust storm took the roof off the livery and the sheriff's wagon with it. Hallam sat in the wreckage with a tailgate across his knees, a rose drawn on it in black, its petals hollow. Ada knelt beside him and asked him to shade just one, so the wood would look like something a person had lived behind. He shook his head and handed her the brush.

She drew the bow above the rose, left the petals open, and leaned the board against the wall where the afternoon sun came through a gap in the boards. Every petal threw a thin bright line across the floor. By sundown the light had moved, and the rose had left its own shape there, unshaded and perfectly clear, which Hallam said was the only shading a rose ever needed.