Realism tattoo of grey shaded roses and an ornate heart locket with a red ribbon across the shoulder and upper back, with the date 23.08.2013 written below.

Roses and heart locket on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The design shows three large roses in grey shading on the left, with dark leaves beneath them. To the right, a detailed silver heart-shaped locket with filigree patterning and small red studs hangs from a red bow and ribbons. A dated script line sits below the locket, and the piece is shaded in greys with red accents.

Realism Botanical Shoulder Back Rose Heart Ribbon Bow Leaves Date Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pell Dorrance had been told by three watchmakers in Hollin Bay that the locket could not be opened without breaking its hinge, and she believed them until the fourth, an old woman who sold roses from a barrow at the ferry steps. The woman took it from Pell's palm and turned it over like a loaf. 'Nobody's broken it,' she said. 'They just never asked what it was waiting for.'

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The locket had come to Pell in a tin of salt-stained things from her grandfather's chandlery: silver filigree gone dark at the seams, red studs like beads of wet cherry, and a ribbon knotted so often it had faded to the colour of old brick. Inside the heart's little window sat a single clock hand, bent at the tip. The roses on the barrow were grey-petalled that season from the rains. The woman said they were the only honest roses left, because they did not pretend to be anything else.

She told Pell to walk the causeway on the first morning of the spring tide, when the bay drained to bare stone, and to carry three white roses inside her coat. The water had not fully gone and Pell's boots filled before she reached the wreck of the old signal tower. At its base a brass plate was screwed into the rock, bearing a date and nothing more. When she held the locket to it, the bent hand clicked straight, and the heart swung open on its own.

Inside was no portrait, only a folded slip in her grandfather's cramped hand: The tide turns for whoever stays to watch it. Pell laughed, then cried, then folded the slip back into its place. She shut the heart, left the roses on the plate, and walked home over the stones as the sea came in behind her, ticking, one step at a time.