Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull with roses and leaves across the upper arm and shoulder.

Skull and roses on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo of a human skull sits on the upper arm, with shaded roses above and below it and a leaf cluster at the top. Fine line filigree swirls and a small gem-like shape add detail near the skull's brow, while soft grey shading gives the skull and petals volume. The tattoo fills most of the frame against a blurred street background, with the wearer's shoulder and dark clothing visible.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Skull Rose Leaves Filigree Swirl Gem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mabel Corrie planted the roses against the churchyard wall the spring her husband sailed for the Baltic, and by midsummer they had outgrown their trellis and were climbing the lichened stones. Each morning she came up the path with her shears and found the same skull sitting in the long grass by the third headstone, grinning at the gate as if it had been waiting for someone to be rude to it. She was not a woman who scolded the dead, so she simply cut her roses and put them in her basket.

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The skull did not speak at first. It only sat in the sun with leaves gathering at its brow, and where its bone met the air a little silver filigree had grown, curled like the tendrils of a vine. On the ninth morning Mabel tied her mother's pearl drop to a thorned stem with fine wire and set it on the skull's forehead. 'Well,' the skull said, in a voice like dry paper, 'that is a waste of a good pearl.' She laughed so hard she dropped the basket.

After that they talked. The skull knew the name of every ship that had ever docked at the harbour below, and it told her the Baltic was cold, that the men on her husband's ship drank too much, and that he would not come home this season. Mabel asked what she could do. 'Give me the last rose,' it said, 'and I will keep watch over the others until the frosts.' She did not believe it, but she gave it the last rose anyway.

The next morning the stem lay across the headstone with the pearl still threaded on it, and the skull had gone quiet. Mabel cut roses until the first frost. When the boat came in at Christmas her husband stood on the quay with the sea still in his coat, and he asked her, laughing, why every rose in the churchyard had a little silver wire wound round its stem.