Black and grey realism tattoo of roses, a feather, a pocket watch, butterflies and cursive script along the ribs and side of the torso.

Roses, feather and script on a side torso

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the side of the torso and upper hip, with three shaded roses, a feather, a pocket watch and a small trail of butterflies. Cursive script runs diagonally between the roses and the watch, and only fragments of the lettering are legible. The fine shading and soft grey gradients give the roses and feather a realistic, dimensional look against the skin.

Realism Lettering Ribs Rose Feather Pocket watch Butterfly Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the tide tables before you learn your own name, the way Hal taught you on the slip at Skerrow, thumbing the brass watch he kept in his waistcoat. It ran four minutes fast all his life, and he swore that was the only honest thing about the harbour. You wind it for him now, every morning, before the boats go out past the breakwater.

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The fleet leaves at four. You ride the bow of the Gannet Rose with a gaff in one hand and a grey gull's feather tucked behind your ear, because the birds follow the shoals and the feather is a small bet you make with yourself. Your mother's roses grow over the wall of the net loft, and she cuts one each Sunday and sets it on the sill where the morning light falls. Nobody can capture light, she says, not with paper or paint or the cameras the tourists wave from the quay. You have to lift your face up and let it rain down.

The third week of October the weather turned without a word. The sky went the colour of wet slate and the swell came up under the hull like something breathing. You remember Hal's voice over the radio, calm as a kettle, counting the boats home one by one. The Gannet Rose answered last. After that there was only static, and a single white scrap of foam caught in the lamplight off the point.

They found her three days later, upright and drifting off the Scaur. Her skipper's watch was in the wheelhouse, hands stopped at a minute past four. You didn't wind it. You carried it up the steps to your mother's sill, set it beside the cut rose, and stood in the rain with your face turned to the sky, letting it fall on you the way it used to fall on him, and for once the hour was exactly right.