Black and grey swan and rose tattoo with leaves and buds on the outer thigh, in a botanical realism style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swan and roses on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo of a swan curving its neck above a cluster of roses, rosebuds and leaves, wrapping around the outer thigh. The linework is fine and detailed, with soft shading in the feathers and petals that gives the flowers depth. The tattoo fills the left side of the frame against a plain brick wall, and a dark t-shirt skirt is pulled up beside it.

Botanical Realism Thigh Swan Rose Rosebud Flower Leaves Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada had sold roses off the barrow at Carrow Bridge station for three summers, and in all that time the swan on the canal had never once looked at her customers. It looked at her. Every morning at ten to seven it drifted under the footbridge, neck bent into a question, waiting for the crust she kept in her apron pocket.

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The morning the 7.12 was cancelled, the platform filled with commuters who wanted coffee and nobody wanted roses. Ada stood with a bucket of unsold buds when Mr Pryce the signalman came down the steps, his lamp still lit though the sun was up. He said the swan had been sitting on the towpath since midnight, wings half open, and would not let anyone near the cob's nest of reeds beneath the arch.

She went down anyway. A cygnet was tangled in green fishing line, a loop biting into one grey leg, and the swan's neck came over her wrist like a hinge. Ada snipped the line with the scissors she used for stems and held the old bird's head while Pryce lifted the chick free. Nobody on the platform clapped. A train pulled in, doors sighing open, and a woman stepped down with a suitcase and a single white rose someone had dropped on the boards.

Ada kept the rose. The next morning, when the swan came under the bridge, she tucked a bud behind her ear and waited. The bird lowered its head and took the crust from her fingers, and for once the platform clock was the only thing in a hurry.