Sketch-style black and red rose tattoo across the upper arm and shoulder, with fine script running down the forearm.

Sketched roses with script on upper arm

Botanical · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

Two open roses and a small rosebud are drawn in thin black linework with grey shading and loose red wash splashes across the shoulder and upper arm. Fine stems curl down the arm, and a line of cursive script continues along the forearm. The image is a close side view of the arm against a dark background, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Rose Rosebud Stem Leaves Script Swirl Splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, all of you, and mind the cake, because this is the story my grandmother told at her own wedding, and she never once got to the end of it before the bread was cut. Her mother had a rose garden behind the chapel in Saint-Brieuc, three bushes in a row, and on the morning of the wedding the eldest one had split its bark in the frost. Nobody thought it would bloom again.

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The bride went out with a pair of kitchen scissors and a dish of warm water, because that was what there was. She cut the cane down to the living wood, bound it with a strip torn from her petticoat, and set the dish underneath. Then she went in to get dressed and forgot all about it, which is the trouble with brides.

By the time the church bell rang, two open roses had come up out of that bush, and a bud no bigger than a thumbnail, and the petals were wet red at their edges as though they had been dipped in the wine the men were pouring. The groom's brother swore the colour ran down the stems in the afternoon. The priest called it a sign. My grandmother called it a rose that had got tired of waiting, and she said it to her new husband in the same tone, and he never once asked her to explain.

So when you see a rose today, look at the stem, because that is where the bride's hands went first. Now somebody fetch the cake before her mother starts telling this part herself.