Traditional style tattoo of a rose with a bud and black leaves, shaded in yellow ochre, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional rose with bud on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A rose in full bloom sits at the centre, with a smaller closed bud and several pointed leaves above and beside it, and a stem running down to a leaf at the base. Bold black outlines define the petals and leaves, with solid black areas and stippled shading. The petals are filled with muted yellow ochre shading that fades into the black, and the composition is an upright vertical spray on pale skin.

Traditional Botanical Forearm Rose Rosebud Leaves Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the snow has been up to the window sills since Tuesday, so the coach won't come and the taproom is full of men who would rather be anywhere else. I'm writing at the table nearest the fire, where Mrs Halloran keeps her geraniums in old biscuit tins. You'll remember the rose cutting Father put in by the yard wall? The frost finished the open bloom, but the closed bud on the lower stem refused to give up, and I've been keeping it in a jar of water on the shelf above the till.

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Last night a lad came in stamping and asked for a bed. I gave him the room under the eaves because nobody else would take it. He had a leather folder under his coat, full of pressed leaves and inked drawings, and a tin of yellow powder he said was ochre from the quarry at Saltwell. He showed me how he worked it into the petals with a stippling brush, so the colour faded out into the black outlines the way lamplight gives up at the edge of a room. He talked about his mother's sign-painting as if it were a church he had once been thrown out of.

He left before first light, with the sun coming off the drifts like sugar. He didn't take the folder. On the inside cover he had drawn a stem running down to a single pointed leaf, and under it, in careful capitals, he had written: KEEP IT OUT OF THE FROST AND LET IT TAKE ITS TIME.

This morning the bud in the jar had split at the tip, a thin line of pink showing through the green. I haven't told Mrs Halloran. I'm telling you, because you always said nothing grows in January, and I wanted you to know I was wrong.