Black and grey realism tattoo of two roses with a black lace pattern across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses and lace on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Two shaded grey roses with small leaves sit at the upper left of the design, with a black lace-like pattern sweeping out to the right. The roses use soft grey shading and highlights for a three-dimensional look, while the lace is rendered in clean, bold black linework with a fine mesh texture. The image is taken close up on bare skin across the upper back, with the design filling most of the frame.

Realism Botanical Back Rose Lace Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the lace came back from the finisher on Hockley Street this morning, and Mr Oduya says the pattern you sent me from the coast is the best he has seen in thirty years. I did not tell him the cobweb net was my idea, or that I sat up until the gas lamps went out in Narrow Marsh counting the mesh by hand.

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The roses are harder to explain. Father's glasshouse went under the frost in February, and the last of the grey Albertines were pulled out of the beds before the bailiffs came. I kept one bloom pressed between the pages of the pattern book. Every night since, I have drawn it again, petal by petal, shading the folds with pencil until it looks like it might be cold to the touch.

Last Thursday St Mary's rang eleven and the whole street went quiet, so I walked the panels up to the Lace Market in the rain with the parcel buttoned under my coat. The night watchman let me into the warehouse without a word. I laid the lace across the cutting table and the lamp caught the net, so the shadows fell across the brick wall like ferns. Nobody will ever know those shadows were mine.

Come home at Easter if the sea has taught you to swim. Bring the good scissors. I am keeping the back room warm and the second rose for you, which I have not finished, because I cannot bear to see it complete yet. Your loving sister, Win.