Drawn design of a skeletal ribcage and pelvis with a pink rose on the left and a blue butterfly on the right, with the text you're the only thing that's keeping me alive.

Skeleton ribcage with rose and butterfly

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

A coloured pencil or ink drawing shows a skeletal torso, with the ribcage, spine and pelvis drawn in pale sepia tones. A pink rose with green leaves sits against the left side of the ribcage, and a blue butterfly with a long body rests beside the lower spine. Handwritten style text at the top and bottom of the plain light background reads you're the only thing and that's keeping me alive.

Botanical Skeleton Ribcage Spine Rose Butterfly Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tom, the rose on the windowsill opened this morning while I was standing at the sink, and I thought of you straight away, which is daft, because you were the one who said roses are only ever a week from dying. Mrs Ashdown's boy brought the post up from the station and there was nothing from the Ministry, so I've stopped looking at the door every time the bell goes and started looking at the sky instead.

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Doctor Pryce came round again on Tuesday with his bag and his long face. He listened to my chest for a long time and said nothing useful, which I suppose is what doctors are for when there's nothing to be done. I asked him to tell me straight and he said the thing about the ribs, how they're built to bend and not to break, and I laughed so hard he thought I'd taken ill again. I didn't tell him I'd been keeping count of the days by the blue butterfly you pinned above the stove, the one with the torn wing you swore you'd mend.

Here is the truth, love. I haven't been eating much and the bones are showing, the way they showed on the anatomy skeleton at the Institute the winter we met. But something is still moving in me, a bit of stubbornness like a moth against the lamp, and I keep thinking it's only you holding it up. You're the only thing that's keeping me alive, and I'm not writing that to make you hurry home. I'm writing it so you know where to aim.

Come back by the lower road, where the dyke runs. I'll leave the lamp in the scullery window burning the way you asked. If the lamp is out, knock anyway. Yours, Nell.