Fine line black tattoo of a small rose with a stem and two leaves on the forearm of a person wearing a white t-shirt and jeans.

Small rose on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small rose in a bud-like head sits on a short stem with two leaves, drawn in thin black linework. The tattoo is shown on the forearm, with the wrist and hand resting across the lower frame. The background is a white t-shirt with an engraved anatomical heart print and blue denim jeans, all in neutral tones.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Rose Stem Leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Penhallow had sent for the cutting by post, and the brown paper parcel carried a Roscoff postmark, which meant the thing inside had crossed the Channel without anyone asking what it was. Len Tregear opened it on the bench in the customs shed while the tide slapped the slipway outside. The wet newspaper had gone grey. Inside was a single stem no longer than his hand, two leaves still green at the joint, and at the top a closed bud, tight as a folded letter.

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'Contraband,' Len told the gull on the rail. In eleven years he had found oranges, brandy, a crate of hairdryers and once a parrot with opinions. He had never found a rose so small. He turned it under the lamp. The thorns were barely there, as if it had been raised somewhere gentle and had never needed to defend itself. The bud had the look of something that had decided not to be hurried. On the form he wrote: one stem, live, nothing to declare but patience. Then he crossed out patience, because the form had no box for it.

Ada's cottage stood at the top of Fore Street, where the wind came straight off the bay and tried every latch. She had a cracked clay pot waiting on the step and compost she had sieved twice. Len carried the stem up himself, tucked inside his coat like a love letter he was not sure he was allowed to deliver. By the time he reached her gate, the bud had begun to loosen along one edge.

She pressed it into the soil with two fingers, said nothing about regulations, and put the kettle on. Three weeks later the rim had opened pale pink on the windowsill, and Len, who had called in for his tea, stood in the doorway pretending he had not been counting the days.