Shirtless man seated on a bed with a black tribal sleeve on his upper arm and a grey rose tattoo on his chest, head cropped out of frame.

Tribal sleeve and chest rose on a shirtless man

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shirtless man sits on a white bed with his head cropped out of frame and one arm raised. A dark tribal-style sleeve wraps the upper arm, and a grey rose sits on the chest beside the ribs. Lettering is partly visible on the thigh, and the image is in black and grey with soft window light.

Blackwork Upper arm Chest Thigh Tribal Rose Lettering Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Abernethy's sheets had been on the line since six, and by the time Ada hauled them in, the wind had stiffened them into white sails. She dumped them across the kitchen table and the window over the sink filled with a light so clean it made the ironing board look guilty. Her brother Tom had written from the pit that he would be home for Sunday dinner, and she had promised him the good tablecloth, the one with the scorched corner she had hidden since spring.

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Upstairs, the sign painter Mr Lowther was working through a tin of soot-black ink he had mixed himself for the new Co-op lettering. He had shown her how to thin it with gum and water so it lay flat and dried the colour of rain on slate. 'Nothing in this town stays black for long,' he said, and she thought it the saddest thing she had heard all year, until she saw the rose he had shaded on the back of an old cigarette card, its petals so soft they seemed to breathe.

Lowther caught the Monday train to Leeds and left her the tin, a roll of stencils for a haulier's cab door, and a note saying the ink would keep if she didn't let it skin over. Ada sat on the edge of her bed with the afternoon coming in sideways across the counterpane and painted a grey rose on the scorched corner of the tablecloth, working the shading out from the centre with the smallest brush she owned.

On Sunday Tom ran his thumb along the hem and frowned at the petals. 'Who taught you that?' he asked. Nobody, she said, which was true enough, and the rose looked back up at them from the linen as though it had been there all along.