Realism style tattoo on a side hip and thigh showing grey and red roses, a pocket watch, a heart padlock, a key and blossoms linked by dotted chains.

Roses, pocket watch and key on hip and thigh

Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a grey rose and a pocket watch near the upper hip, blossoms rising toward the ribs, and a larger pink rose on the thigh. Below it sit a heart-shaped padlock and a key, joined by a dotted chain running down the leg. The shading is soft and realistic, with grey tones for the watch, flowers and metalwork and warm pink for the lower rose, set against bare skin in a side-on view.

Realism Botanical Ribs Thigh Rose Pocket watch Key Padlock Heart Blossom Chain Clock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch had stopped at twenty to four, and nobody on the Sallow Pass road could say whether that was the hour it fell or the hour somebody decided it should have. My father carried it for thirty years, winding it every night before he slept. When he died in the spring I took it from his shirt pocket and found a small key still hanging from the silver chain beside it. I had no idea what the key was for. I only knew he had never let it out of his sight.

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Mae Cordova came into the garage at noon with a heart-shaped padlock in one hand and a rose pressed flat inside her wallet. She said the lock hung on a shed out past the dry lake, that her grandfather had fastened it there in 1971 and lost the key. She had heard a man in this town could open anything. I told her I could open anything except my own father. She laughed at that, which I hadn't expected, and I took the key from my pocket and held it up to the light.

The shed leaned on its posts as if it were listening for a car. Inside were eleven clocks, all stopped, and a biscuit tin full of letters tied with string. The key turned with a grind of rust, and the padlock dropped open into my palm. I knew the handwriting on the top envelope before I read the name. It was my father's, and it was addressed to Mae's grandfather, dated every month for forty years, and never posted.

We drove back across the flats with the tin on the seat between us. That night I wound the watch the way he always had, and for once it kept time.