Black script reading Texas over a red-tinted Texas state outline, with shaded roses, on a person's upper back.

Texas state outline with script and roses

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the outline of the state of Texas with the word Texas written across it in a black cursive script. Two shaded roses with leaves sit at the top and bottom of the design, and the state outline is filled with a soft red wash. The linework is bold and clean, with grey shading on the roses, and the design is centred on the upper back against plain skin.

Lettering Botanical Back Texas State outline Script Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad's ledger sat open on the potting bench for three weeks after the funeral, the pencil lying in the crease where he'd left it. Nobody in the family liked to be the one to close it. Out past the greenhouse the red dirt around Tyler had cracked into plates, and the old climbing roses along the fence looked like they'd given up on the Tuesday he died.

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On the first wet morning I went out with a pair of secateurs and cut every dead cane I could find, the way he taught me when I was nine and too short to reach the top wire. Each cut smelled sharp and green. By noon my gloves were stained the colour of weak tea, and my brother Ray had stopped pretending he was busy with the truck.

"Those are the last of the Hagerty stock," he said. "You want to hang on to them, or sell them off to that lot in Dallas?"

I didn't answer straight away. I looked at the ledger, at the careful columns of dollars and dozens in Dad's square hand, then at the fence. The rose that had come through the drought was climbing the wire with new leaves no bigger than a fingernail, and a single bud was already showing its red at the tip.

"Pot them," I said. "We'll see what comes up in March."