Realism tattoo of red roses, a pocket watch and sheet music with black and grey scrollwork across the upper back and shoulder.

Roses, pocket watch and sheet music on a back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

The design shows red roses at the top and lower left, an open pocket watch with a chain, and a grey rose made from sheet music with treble clef notes. Black and grey scrollwork fills the right side and the lower area, with the lower left edge fading into shadow. Soft shading and fine detail give the roses and metal parts a three-dimensional look, and the red ink contrasts with the grey tones throughout.

Realism Botanical Back Shoulder Rose Pocket watch Clock Sheet music Treble clef Scrollwork Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At ten to three the ward lights dropped to their night setting, and Nadia Brennan lifted the old man's watch from the bedside locker where it had sat since teatime. Mr Oduya-Hale had asked for it, so he could keep the time without troubling anyone. The chain was cold against her palm, and a hairline crack ran across the glass like a flaw in a teacup.

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He was awake, though his eyes were closed. "Is it the hour?" he asked. "Twenty to three," she said. "Then the bells have gone at St Aidan's." He had played the organ there for forty-one years and could still hear the choir drawing breath before each verse. On the blanket beside his hand lay a sheet of hymn music he had folded into a rose, the treble clef pressed flat by his thumb.

He talked, and she let him. He spoke of a Thursday in 1977 when the bellows failed halfway through an anthem and the whole congregation kept singing anyway, unaccompanied and a little flat. "Nobody noticed the silence," he said, "because we filled it." Nadia wound the watch slowly, the way he had shown her, and the second hand began its small, hard walk around the dial.

At three he was asleep with the paper rose still in his fingers. She set the watch on the windowsill where the moonlight could reach its face, then went down the corridor to chart the obs. Behind her the ticking carried on, steady and unhurried, like a hymn someone had decided to keep singing.